Windows Vista? I hardly know her!

Yesterday, after a cheap screening of Push, a friend of mine said he's got a problem with his laptop. He asked if I could get my geek on and fix the problem. So I innocently headed over to his apartment to solve the issue.

Here's the deal. He bought a Dell laptop a few months ago and has it wirelessly connected to an AT&T router/cable modem thingy. I took a quick look at the laptop and I couldn't find any icons that helped find his wireless settings. It suddenly dawned on me, "This is Vista". Oh, crap. I've never used Vista, like I've never used acid to clean my eyes. There was a preference window for his network stuck on the desktop that wouldn't go away. I couldn't even click any of the buttons, it just chimed at me. I was a stranger in a strange land.

I recently upgraded my mac at work from Tiger to Leopard, but the transition was a bit more seamless (after a punch in the face during install that I'll post in the future). In the back of my mind I had always hoped Vista was a better tuned version of XP but I was sadly mistaken. I tried shutting the computer off but the stupid icon that looks like an on/off button is just a hibernation switch. Who does that! I eventually stabbed at the correct combination of buttons and icons to get a summary; that he had local access only connection status with his Wi-Fi. Something was up.

A forum search over the next hour unearthed this nugget. These is a bug/flaw/feature in Vista where it randomly stops communicating wirelessly. This has been going on since 2007? You mean there's no service pack or patch in almost 2 years that addresses this issue? WTF!!?! I did find one helpful piece of advice and that was to go into the Wireless Connection properties (which I found by chance/The Force) and disable the IPv6 setting.

Upon a fresh reboot the thing stalled in log-out for more than 10 minutes. In that time I learned why I don't like Nip/Tuck but graciously it ended and my buddy had to pull the battery to stop the laptop. Pull the battery? For real? Is Vista that effed up? Then he got it running again, and I'm beginning to question where he got is info; you shouldn't have to pull the battery. But then, it worked perfectly. Go me. The forum that helped me out is here.

In the end I learned I hate Vista. I'm sure it was built with the best intentions but XP is just fine and I ain't playing with Windows 7 Beta. F*** that. He also has the latest version of Internet Explorer that is so muddled and confusing I couldn't find the Internet Options menu to set his home page for him. Microsoft, here's a message, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Today I needed to clear my mind of PC Windows stuff by trying to figure out how to make an RSS feed out of an XML page for our new Podcasts on the website. I went to an eHow page that steered my wrong but I found my course on the Apple help page. It took some time to learn XML coding for iTunes, because, as it turns out, they have specific tags for coding all the metadata. But, in the end; mission accomplished. Submitting to iTunes caused me grief when the system clock upset the process. I kept geting a session timout error. After following yet another forum I got it working and suddenly it was submitted.

I received an e-mail saying, standby for a confirmation e-mail while we review. Now its out of my hands and up to the Apple Podcast Gods. And, if you are wondering if I liked the movie Push, you'll have to wait for next weeks podcast. BTW, I wish Dakota Fanning would hurry and grow up, because it seems creepy that I like seeing her in movies. She's almost 15 and I think I started seeing her on TV at age 8. See you next broadcast.