Streets & Trips 2007 vs. Windows Vista

I got a new computer a couple of weeks ago and decided it should go with me everywhere. Having made that decision, I needed Streets & Trips installed and working so I wouldn't have to install it on my company machine. No problem, right? Wrong. Here's my story so far with Microsoft Streets & Trips:

In 2005, I got S&T 2005 with the GPS locator device. Everything worked great. Flawless. Perfect. Loved it. Upgraded to 2006 when it came out, again without incident. Last November, 2007 was released with an upgraded locator device, but since I already had a perfectly good one, I ordered Streets & Trips 2007 without the device (clever me - I saved about $80) and it arrived from Amazon.com shortly after the release date.

Upon installing over the 2006 edition, I found that it simply uninstalls 2006 (or whatever earlier edition one may have) and cleanly installs S&T 2007. Fine. Whatever.

What it never told me is that it flushed all the drivers for the GPS locator device I had. Same program, just a newer version, and it paid no mind to my existing device. Not recognized. No support. Found nothing at microsoft.com about the Pharos GPS-360 device. I didn't get it. I still don't.

What I finally stumbled upon was at some 4-wheel-drive site that somehow had the drivers for this device. I installed these separately and the device worked perfectly. I don't know why the device isn't supported naturally by S&T 2007, but I'd found a fix and had helped a few friends with this issue. I thought it was over.

And then I got this new computer with Windows Vista. Different structure to the operating system. Some things still don't work. And all I had was this driver installer program written by some people who use Google to speak English. It said it successfully installed the drivers for this GPS-360, but when I plugged it in, Windows couldn't find anything to support it. This went on for several days as I downloaded the latest stuff from pharos, installed it, plugged in my GPS locator, and had no luck. Several times.

Then I got wise. I still had the discs for S&T 2005, and the drivers just had to be on there, didn't they? Tonight I put the setup disc in and browsed it for the drivers. They were there, and I was set. So I plugged in my locator and waited for Windows to tell me it couldn't find the drivers for my device...

And somehow it found them automatically. I don't know if it found them on the CD, or finally saw what I had installed seven times previously, but it works. And I'm happy. I'm writing this so that Google may index it for people looking to ease their troubles with Streets & Trips 2007 using the Pharos GPS-360 device. Here are the drivers from the S&T 2005 disc in case they happen to work for you.





Update: Some folks may have trouble with the zip file I've got. Here are the driver files as they are on the Streets & Trips 2005 CD:

GPSDrvrs/NT_XP:
ser2plms.cat
ser2plms.inf
ser2plms.sys

GPSDrvrs/98_ME:
SER9PLMS.sys
sersplms.INF
SERSPLMS.VXD
serwplms.INF

2007 Summer Reading List

My Summer 2007 Reading List is complete. I am excitedly looking forward to summer since I'm taking the season off from school, and want to get some reading done. For three months, this is not entirely impossible to complete:

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins
"The Ancestor's Tale" by Richard Dawkins
At least one Ann Coulter book
One book written by a former president
A book shared with Beth (probably from the banned books list)
"Hannibal Rising" by Thomas Harris,
And all my unread Grisham Novels, including:

• The Chamber
• The Summons
• The Last Juror
• The Rainmaker
• The Pelican Brief
• The Innocent Man

If I don't get tied up in anything else, I may finish this list. It's not a dull one at all.

Told You I Was Watching!

Looks like April 26 is the day for Dr. Hawking's weightless flight. I wonder what his motivation is...

Yeah, Thanks.

You are Catherine the Great. You are very intelligent and a socialist. It is very important to you that all people be treated equally in a society. You are able to fully comprehend social problems and you are outspoken when it comes to dealing with them. Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Actually, I think I'm just a follower of Scott. Every time he finds a new quiz on the Web, I take it and post my own results, just like he did.

Still searching for the meaning of life.

Everything in Question

I've been pondering lately the meaning of life. Not just the meaning of life, mind you, but a slew of other questions as well, such as our reason for being here and the reason we do certain things. This line of questioning tends to branch off and become very complicated at about the sixth level, so I'll stop there. I want to share my thoughts with my readers and quote a bit, if not just to fill up some space on the World Wide Web.

The first passage I want to share with you is too long to reprint in full here (I'll only provide one paragraph.) It is from the Introduction to A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and I would encourage anyone to read it for understanding. It helps explain to me why we're here on Earth at this time:

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.

Simply put, we just are. That's it. We exist. Maybe there will be more later as I continue my journey. Maybe not.

If You Think It's Hard To Find Teachers Now,

Wait until this shit hits the school system. Federal guidelines telling schools when to fire teachers? For reasons often beyond the educator's control (and beyond the school system, for that matter)? I don't get it.

Yeah. That's What I Said, Too. (Netherlands or Bust!)

I've been rather apathetic about my organization's role in society lately. Now I know I'm not alone. For those of you who know, you know. I will not disclose my employer here.

Support, Support, Support. I Need It.

You may now show your support for this site by sending money via PayPal to service@nfccomputers.com. Or you could shop at our cafepress.com store where "Ben Rehberg's Value T-Shirt" is selling like mad.

Wankers and Misspellings

The Probablist wrote a list of 10 most misspelled words in blogs, and I couldn't be happier with the level of attention his article has gotten. Digg.com blew it up and it got lots of traffic. Props to him.

I am chastised every time I try to correct someone's misspelling or grammatical errors, and the culprit shines a light of disdain on me that somehow paints me the color of "asshole" every time. It's English, folks, and the American kind. It's the type we were taught in elementary school (though you weren't listening while the teacher went on and on about comparative/superlative adjectives and run-on sentences). I learned in the Army that paying attention is key to survival, and it couldn't be more important when applied to writing in the public domain. I haven't told Scott yet that "noone" should have a space between the o's, and Justin should really study his usage of apostrophes. I can't really harp on them though, and this is why: I know several people who hold graduate degrees and still cannot form a proper cover letter. They cannot document their work with proper punctuation and spelling, and some cannot even communicate well verbally.

I must point now to an article I came across several years ago (can't believe I can still find it) titled "How to Write Like a Wanker." The article points out several shortcomings of speech on the Internet, albeit mostly by teenagers (my definition of "teenagers" here certainly includes wankers in their early twenties), but informative and entertaining nonetheless. It includes my favorite, "pluralize with apostrophes." We could all use a little brush-up on the grammar, spelling, and content of what we write, and also a lesson on how our writing can impact our own image and credibility. I simply refuse to patronize any establishment with misspellings, backwards letters, or simple oversights in their marquees, menus, or websites. It makes no sense to put value in someone's work when they can't bother to get something that simple correct.

And yes, I do admit that I am not perfect. I've tried my best to make this site look as clean as possible and keep the ads to a minimum. I do my best to spell everything correctly and form complete sentences, and for the most part I succeed. Let that be my gift to the Internet, and may you all go spread the correctly-spelled word to others who need it.

Thought We Were Out of Beta

While trying to publish an edit to the previous post, I got this error:

bX-y5mpya

Additional information

blogID: 6667391
uri: /post-edit.do
host: www2.blogger.com
postID: 4728350865740187879

Just thought you should know. Not sure why they gave me that information - they didn't point me directly to a form to report a problem. But I trust Google.

Someone's pager probably went off as that error number was being generated, and that thought makes me happy because it's 3:30 AM in Mountain View, and I'm not there.

DualDisc

John Mayer recently posted about the DualDisc and its failure. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a disc with two capabilities. On one side it's a CD just like any other, but on the other side is DVD content. Just like a dual-layer DVD, but with one layer of CD content, readable from the other side of the disc. Marvelous idea in my opinion, but apparently not for a musician who is pressured to find crap to put on the DVD side. This video is an illustration of the small production John Mayer created to put on the DVD side of his DualDisc. He also says "the DualDisc was so aptly named as only two of them were sold, I thought you might like to see."

I admit that I own one of those DualDiscs.



This probably helped engineers get started on the dual-mode HD-DVD/Blu-Ray discs (not a bad idea if companies can't agree, though there really should be just one friggin' format) so we can ignore the hype of either company.

Remember That Time I Played Rugby?

I don't think I told my readers that I recently took up the sport of rugby. I started a column weeks ago about how rugby has changed my outlook on many things - I felt more confident, walked (though very sore) with a sense of pride that almost made me a bully (no one ever knew), and thought I had found a group of real gentlemen.

I never finished that column.

We had our first game today, and I can say nothing much more than that it was a disgrace. A disgrace not only to our ability to score, but a disgrace to the highly-regarded game of rugby and the people we are. When I was brought into the sport, I was told it was a gentleman's game; that there was respect for the sport and the opposing team right on the pitch, even when the referee wasn't looking. No matter what happened, we'd all get together to drink and sing songs post-match as was the tradition of rugby. It's a rewarding sport, with every step the history and presence of the traditions and rules would wrap us all in glory just for having played.

Ready for my take?

As with many sports, rugby depends heavily on teamwork. We simply didn't play as a team. One wing (one of the men on the outside) touched the ball one time. That's about as much passing as we did. I saw men on both teams get hit for no reason. The match really turned into "who's balls are bigger" and the game and traditions of rugby turned to shit. All we had to do was pass the ball to a few folks and we could have kept possession and probably scored a couple of more times.

But what do I know? Last time I was on a winning team that worked this hard, I was 9 and the sport was soccer. The principles were the same then, too.

Now I'm just going to bathe and find something better to do.

...But I Don't.

I wrote earlier about programming on this cute little Mac, but there was something I didn't realize at the time. I found that Java development was already available on this machine and I could compile and run my programs with ease. Fantastic.

But actually writing the code on the Mac has become a bit more than trivial. The only text editors I have are in AppleWorks 6, TextEdit, and vi (a command-line text editor). I can't figure out how to save a file in TextEdit to a raw text file (it only saves in RTF), it's virtually impossible to do in AppleWorks, and I'm not taking the time to write programs in vi. Looks like I can't put the Windows box in the closet yet.

I tried Eclipse, but it never tells me it won't run - it just doesn't run. Turns out it only works on 10.4. Damn it. I thought I had it all worked out.

It'll Never Happen

My good friend John wrote back in September about zombies when he was visiting Portland. Not sure what brought it up (he is a very creative fellow), but his post was funny nonetheless.

As I sit here tonight and battle another round of insomnia with milk and cookies at the kitchen table rather than my office, I'm trying to find a way to get in touch with someone loved and adored by millions. According to MySpace, John is one of my 13 friends, and I'm one of his 211,375. He is a hard person to contact due to his frequent traveling and wild popularity.

The reason I want to contact him is that I saw a book during my Christmas shopping that I thought he might be interested in. That's all. And I'm writing about it here and now because I can't sleep. I visited John's website tonight after reading that he'd stopped in San Francisco yesterday to do a special show at Macworld for the announcement of the iPhone. I thought he might write to say something about San Francisco or maybe the first performance in two weeks, but nothing except the "Tao of MySpace."

Yeah, Tao. Of MySpace.

I posted a comment on his MySpace page and thought I'd stand out somewhat with what I said. When I went back to actually see my comment (about two minutes later) I found it buried under 9 others already. It was then that I finally realized.

If You Don't Read Anything Else

I know I'm on furlough, but I got the best e-mail from someone named "Your Federal Credit Union" at info@mail.dc2cars.com and had to take a look. It got through Gmail's spam filters somehow, so it has to be legitimate, right? In a word, no. It was sent to the address I have posted in the sidebar to elicit comments (see the section labeled about me), and I have never registered anywhere using that address, nor have I given it to anyone. I've simply displayed it there at the right. The e-mail was as follows:

Dear Federal Credit Union account holder,

This is a part of our security service measures, we regularly screen activity in Federal Credit Unions (FCU) network.
We recently noticed the following issue on your account: A recent review of your account determined that we require some additional information from you in order to provide you with our secure services.

Case ID Number: FCU-065-617-349

In accordance with NCUA User Agreement, your account access will remain limited until the issue has been resolved. Unfortunately, if the access to your account remains limited for an extended period of time, it may result in further limitations or eventual account closure. We encourage you to take 3-5 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal account records as soon as possible to help avoid this. We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account.

Visit the link below and fill out the form on the following page to complete the verification process.

National Credit Union Administration

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely, NCUA Account Review Department

If one were to click on the link to what might appear to be the National Credit Union Administration, they would be taken to a site that looked a whole lot like this¹. Compare it to the actual NCUA Website and you might notice subtle similarities². This is a good trick to make one think he's actually at a valid website, and it actually does exactly that. The reason phishers are so successful is that apparently no one reads the news or warnings about phishing attacks and believes everything they read in e-mail, even if it's from info@mail.dc2cars.com, is quite vague, and has something to do with their personal account at a credit union. Not to mention it was supposed to be from the National Credit Union Administration, (a United States bureaucratic organization) but the link in the e-mail led to //kokoroplanet.jp/NCUA/ (a domain reserved for an individual or company within Japan) and the clicker actually ended up at //83.147.69.14/NCUA/ (a server traced to somewhere in Italy).

I think someone said one time, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." That shouldn't even be a valid statement, given the warnings we see every day and the stories we hear about stolen identities and empty bank accounts. The new saying should be "Few will be first, but no one should follow." I have posted on phishing at least two other times at this site. Microsoft and Mozilla work hard to try to warn users about these sites as soon as they're reported. ISPs and governments work together to try to shut down the server hosting the fraudulent site. All of these efforts are greatly appreciated and benefit the public, but none of it would be necessary if we'd just pay a little more attention.

I've noticed that many people who ask my advice never attentively listen to my answer or explanation, and then just shrug it off with a "hum" when I come to a point. They never realize just how important it is that they know what I am telling them, or how dangerous things can be if they're ignorant. If you think your credit's shaky with the $300K home and the new Escalade, wait until you type your Social Security number into the wrong form on the web and send it to a twenty-something in Zheleznodorozhnyy, Kaliningradskaya³.

Heed the warnings, people. I just wish I could get some good spam lists and send this letter to everyone on them.


1. If they make me take that page down, I've also printed it for you.
2. Actually, they're not similarites - all of the sidebar content and images are actually provided by the NCUA website. The phishermen just took the NCUA page as a template, inserted the form for the victim, and posted the page at their site.
3. Zheleznodorozhnyy is a real city. You won't really see it, but this points to the metropolis, pop. 2963.

Space Travel at 67 is Crazy, but This I Gotta See

Okay, check this out:

Anyone know who Stephen Hawking is? You know, the theoretical physicist who wrote "A Brief History of Time?" Yeah, him.

Are you familiar with his physical condition? At about age 22, it was discovered he has ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. They told him he might not make it to 25. He now rolls around in an electric wheelchair and speaks with the help of a computer. He holds a prestigious position at Cambridge University as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a chair once filled by Isaac Newton. He was born on this day in 1942.

But it gets better: Professor Hawking intends to go into space in 2009.

Beat that.

Goodbye, and Thank You

Ando Momofuku died Friday. He will most certainly be remembered for his subtle gift to college students, Army personnel, and the poor alike. Ando created a culture with his meal, and probably never thought it would become this widespread.

I'm eating Top Ramen's Spicy Chile Chicken Flavor noodles this morning in his honor. Total cost: 26¢ and four minutes.

And don't be fooled: I'm still on furlough.

Furlough

I'm off for awhile. E-mail if you want.

Why Do I Bother?

Google Answer to Filling Jobs Is an Algorithm (New York Times)

Google is trying something new with hiring folks these days, and I began to read this article with enthusiasm, thinking a dream just might come true and I could find myself on the payroll next year with my favorite corporation. Alas, I still need to finish school even to be the janitor.

Mathematics is absolutely required for engineering at Google, and it's a subject I have long put away after going nine rounds with Calculus earlier in the decade. I feel comfortable with math but it takes a good bit of time and an inordinate amount of self-discipline to operate at that higher level.

Google has created a survey that its candidates will begin taking this month, and it predicts it might double its workforce this year (which is 10,000) and that means about 200 hires per week. They had to find some quantitative method, didn't they? I probably would, too. With my current level of education and experience I still don't qualify even for systems administration. So...

If given the chance I would propose to Google that they buy me. That's right, me. They can put me through the rest of school and I will work for them to pay it off. If Google gives every employee so much to come and stay, why can't that be education? They're building an army and they seem to have the money to accommodate me (not to mention a little pull with the folks at Stanford), the only question is how do I ask this? Who do I e-mail, or where do I show up to yell "I want to finish school so I can work for Google!"

If I could ask the right person and they can answer me objectively as to why it's not a good idea, I'll quit. But until then, while the United States Army is still offering to pay off student loans to any flunkie who went to college, it's a good idea for Google to front me some education. Hell, I'd even settle for Berkeley. Everyone says they're starving for people, but I just don't see it yet. The Department of Family and Children Services will pay for a Graduate degree while the social worker goes to school while employed, and some school districts will pay for education so long as the future educator signs a contract to teach in that district for a period of time. I believe I have a case.

Java and the Mac

In light of the quickly approaching first day of Spring semester, I thought I should check this Mac and see if I'll have any problems programming in Java with the little cutie. I had already downloaded Eclipse and installed it though I never have learned how to build a project. Today, for some reason, it wouldn't even start. I just wanted to write simple program source files and compile them for class, so I went straight to java.sun.com and looked for the SDK that they surely made for the Mac - and didn't find it. Next step: Google.

The first thing the idiot savant told me was that I didn't need an SDK or to download the runtime environment. I found a developer's site at Apple that said, "Mac OS X is the only mass-market operating system that comes complete with a fully configured and ready-to-use Java Development Kit." I think that's great. I even tried it. I took a source file I wrote last semester and issued the same commands to compile and build the program, then ran it. Flawless. If I could find a text editor I liked, this thing would be really groovy.