Great Expectations

A fresh blog by Patrick! This blog will be more about me and less about Nintendo.

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Location: Colorado, United States

I'm just your average teen some would say. Though I don't really think so. You decide what you want about me, good, or bad.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Pandora is good now?

I'm not sure either but dispite the name Pandora.com is still a pretty neat site.

Pandora is powered by what they call "the Music Genome Project". Basically in a Nutshell, it helps find music you like based on an artist you input (I think you can add more than one to a station and even if you can't you can have 100 stations) and then over time as you say 'Yay' or 'Nay' to song it learns based on that too.

The only problem is that it's a webbased tuner so if you're like me and you tend to close your browser a lot out of habit then that can be bad >_<

Fortunatly I've learned about an amazing, wonderful, obscure Microsoft tool that more or less solves this problem. It's call an HTML Application, or .hta, and basically what it is is a .html file renamed to .html and run in a special program (you know, one of the hundreds in sys23 you have no clue why it exists!). And then what it does is runs the .hta (remember it's just a .html) in it's own window like it was a program so you don't have to mess with tool bars and stuffs.

If you want to use Pandora feel free to also use:
My Desktop Tuner

If it opens in a browser window then prompts to be downloaded again when you run it then right click and select "Open with..." then go to "C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshta.exe" and tell it to Always Open it with that since you can't open it when anything else as far as I know.

So yeah, then run that and enjoy!

Chao!

Saturday, July 01, 2006

My Opera?

What a concept! Me + Opera = Neato!

However..... Me + Opera + My Existing Blog = Holy Wowza!

Yes, this is what My Opera can do. It can import your blog from Blogger! And I'm pretty sure you can do it over and over, it's just more of a hassle after the first time. Not to mention I'd say My Opera has a cleaner, more user friendly interface (though much less customizable since you can't desgin the entire page from scratch).

Anyway, I'm still thinking about whether or not I should transfer my blog entirely to My Opera, just import the Blogger version each time I post, or just not use My Opera at all.

This is the question I leave to you, the readers.

The Pros to moving half way:
- A photo album to put my sunset pictures in.
- Two different looks.
- Still having a semi-simple url.

The Cons:
- A longer url.(This one really only applys if I move totally.)

Those are really the only things I can think of.... But even still, I want you guys to choose. I can always get an ne1.net redirect link or something....

Anyway, here's a link to my other blog:
My Other Blog

Though, please go through this link too:
Affiliate Link

Deathfully yours,
The Management

Friday, June 23, 2006

iTunes = Bad?

No. Way. Apple = Mac = better than your mom!

But it's true actually! At least if it decided you're the lucky user that gets to lose their CD/DVD Drives. Like me! Yes, the problem is I didn't have a clue what the heck caused me to lose my drives, all I knew is that Windows Defender was yelling at me to restart, which I naturally put off, and when I did my drives were gone, even my Deamon Tools Virtual Drives wouldn't work.

Anyway, After Googling the entire error code I found this page:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/35761/

How to fix error (code 41) after installing iTunes:
(NOTE: I don't offer troubleshooting for this as I don't know why it works.... If it breaks more don't blame me!)

Start > Run > Registry Editor (regedit)

Search for:
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

or just navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

IMPORTANT:
At this point, click on the folder in the left window and then back it up (File > Export) incase something bad happens.


Next, select both (ctrl + click) UpperFilters and LowerFilters.
Right click them, click delete, then click OK.

Finally go to the divice manager and uninstall the drives and reboot.

Note: I can't say this will work, and if it makes things worse, you'll probably be able to return things to the way they were by importing that backup (.reg) you made.


Alternately you can try:
I've heard that simply uninstalling iTunes and then reinstalling it works too, but I dunno about that.


My Advice, if you haven't installed iTunes, don't if you don't have to. Instead just get JetAudio!

Chao!

Monday, June 19, 2006

Relationships? Hm....

I meant to post about this like right after I had the conversation, but.... well I'm me and so I just put it off and seeing as it's 3 in the morning I thought: "Hey! Why not write a blog post now?" and so here we are.

Anyway, I had a neat conversation, last tuesday, about boyfriend/girlfriend relationships and I realy want to use this post sort of as a refinement of how I feel about dating, for now anyway.

How I haven't read any books about this and I haven't really talked to anyone about this a whole lot but I think that a "boyfriend/girdfriend" relationship isn't so much "dating" as much as just being friends. Obviously there's more ot it than that but if you focus too much on what the media is feeding us, that we have to look a certain way to be cool or do certain things to be liked (relevent link), then you lose sight of what you should really be aiming for: just loving each other.

Have you ever noticed how almost every single one of the couples still married after 60+ (or how ever long) years always seem to be friends with each other? They're certainly not sticking together because the other is "hot".

Now certainly high-school relationships can be a good thing. They offer a semi-casual place to make mistakes and have fun, they also act as stepping stones into deeper relationships, but all the same, the focus needs to not be on what the media tells us and more on just being friends, since it seems that's one of the skills most of us need the most practice with.

The thing is most of us think we're much more mature than we really are and that tends to lead to broken friendships, which is never good.

I think that most people need to realize that a relationship built on things like looks and sex and peer-pressure is like builting a sand castle, it won't take much (say a stick of dynamite) to ruin.
"Falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift....
but the groth of true friendship may be a life long affair."
- Sarah Orne Jewett

Now, I totally understand things seem a lot different when you've got a crush on a cute guy/girl or your friends are like "Dude, you went to a moive with her, why havn't you asked her out yet?" but this is just something to keep in mind.

One way to keep friends from pressuing you about a relationship is "group dating". Go out with big groups of people (eg. youth group) that way even if you do sit by someone you like it's less likely someone will think of it as a "date".

I know there was at least one other thing but being 4:30 am my memory isn't quite the best. So.... yeah! That's sorta my outlook on boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. In short, being friends is the best way to go.

I get the strange feeling, like I do with most of my posts, that this post is incomplete and that I left something out. If it seems incomplete to you, lemme know, I suck at critiquing my own work. Thanks ^_^

Anyway! Voi!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Happy 666 Day!

Before I forget, I wanted to wish everyone a happy 6-6-06 ^_^

That and it turns out the Flying W Ranch only hires 16 year olds and 15 year olds turning 16 in 3 - 4 weeks from the time of the interview. Basically, I have to wait till next year to get a job there >_<

I guess this means no cowboy hat! At least I can still use Andrew to get the discount on stuff I buy.

Children in the Movies

I saw this article link thingy on MSN.com that had a picture of the kid in "The Omen" and it makes me wonder who are the parents of the little 7-year old boy that they let him play the role of who I'm pretty sure is the Anti-Christ? I mean that's got to be a pretty intense role to play even for an adult, much less a child.

Not to mention the fact he's basically playing a character that's you know.... pure evil. That's got to have a long lasting impact on a 7-year old's mind.

Now, I'm not quite sure how you'd set this up, but I think there should be protections for children younger than 13 or whatever so even if their parent's consent to letting them be in a movie they wouldn't be able to play star roles in certain movies that could be potentially harmful to them.

After all, people say that playing violent video games causes violence in children and that they shouldn't be allowed to buy them, I don't see how staring in a horror movie could be any better for them.

Now, I haven't seen The Omen, and I don't really care to, so maybe it's not as bad as the trailer portray it, but for the moment that's how I see things.

Anyway!

Chao!

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Bi-Wii-kly Maybe

Even though this still wouldn't be a Bi-Wii-kly post.... I think I might change to that anyway, since I'd have even more trouble keeping up with it than I already am. So.... yeah!

Anyway, I'm hopefully going to be getting a job at "The Flying W Ranch" which is an Old Western Style Mini Town Place that you can walk around in and shop and everything, then if it's bad weather outside you go sit down in this big building that's packed full of Picinic Benches, other wise you sit in a big courtyard area before getting in a line to get either Brisket or Chicken (or if you paid more Steak), Baked Beans, a Potato, two biscuts, Apple Sauce, and a slice of spice cake. Oh and you can have Iced Tea, Black Coffee, Lemonaid, or water.

So anyway, after you get like.... 30-45 minutes to eat then you get to watch a bunch of skits and stuff. Then you go home full!

So yeah, I would have been interviewed today but the interviewer person had the day off >_< So maybe tomorrow, we'll see. I'd really like to work there because A) Andrew's worked there for about a year now, B) Brian now works there, and C) It'd have been really easy to get a job there since I've got Andrew to vouch for me!

Oh, and I want to wear a cowboy hat! ^_^

Sunday, May 28, 2006

YAY! For Sundays

I've had a fairly interesting Sunday. First to start it off my Youth Group was playing Sharks & Minnows and it seems I'm more out of shape than I thought. My lungs are still sore and my legs are still a little shakey >_<


The second thing that I'd like to share is that Sarah brought her boyfriend Chris (I'm pretty he's her boyfriend and named Chris), to church this week and before our lesson Chris was saying something, I wasn't really paying attention, and Sarah gets up, walks over to him, and says something close to this:
Sarah: You need to stop cussing.
Chris: I wasn't cussing!
Sarah: Up here. *shakes Chris' head*

And I was thinking about how awesome it would be to have a friend that'd be able to know everything you're doing and thinking and be able to poke you and say "Yo, you need to stop that." when ever you're falling into lust or lying or cussing.

It'd be extremely annoying and embarrasing, but it would be great to know that they care about you and love you enough to try and get you to quit.
(Note: I'm not accusing anyone of being a bad friend or anything, if anyone was thinking that, just pointing out that it would be nice to have someone be able to do that.)


I had a third thing I wanted to post but.... I don't feel like going over it a gazillion times to get it right since it's an anology and my memory is teh suck! >_<

Maybe I'll post it later, either way....

Chao!