XP SP3 mess, Iphone home, Heroes

I spent a good part of the day yesterday f’ing around with XP SP3.  The damn thing just would not install.  Each time I attempted the install it would get most of the way through before an “Access Denied” error would pop up.  A quick search on the web revealed this problem is rather common unfortunately.  It normally has to do with a virus protection program locking the registry from changes the service pack wants to do.  Ok no problem, I’ll disable vp.

So I disable Symantec Endpoint protection as well as Spy Sweeper and try the upgrade again, same thing. I do more research and find some script that supposedly resets the registry and a bunch of files back to their default permissions.  This script takes FOREVER to run but I patiently wait for it to complete.  It finally does and I again attempt the install.  Keep in mind each install and failure takes a loooooong time.  There is some MSFT process called fixccs.exe that just spins it’s wheels forever during the install.  After the install fails there is a lengthy rollback process followed by a reboot.  After going through this process at least a half dozen times I was almost out of patience.  So I decided to get extreme my last attempt and instead of disabling my virus protection, I would uninstall it completely.  After doing this I started the upgrade again before leaving for home.

So I came in today to find the upgrade completed, imagine that.  It didn’t take long for me to notice that another post upgrade problem I read about, a blank Device Manager and Network Connections box had now taken center stage.  Microsoft has a hot fix for this problem although I don’t quite understand why it isn’t rolled into the current version of SP3.  I download it, run it and it just spins and spins.  I kill it after waiting a long time with nothing evidently happening.  I do so more research and read the fine print that says it has to be run from Safe Mode, duh. 

So I reboot, run the utility and it completes in a few seconds.  I restart once again and all apparently is well once again.  In total I bet I spent a good 8 hours screwing with the damn thing.   I think it is pretty ridiculous that MSFT would release a service pack without testing how it would interact with something as common as AV software, especially from an industry giant like Symantec.  Hopefully nothing else blows up.

So last night after work Ali gave me the blessing to go get my Iphone.   I wanted the 16 gig model for the extra storage room.  I called during the afternoon to the store I visited before.  They said they had one in stock but they couldn’t hold it until after 5 so I would have to just stop and see if it is there.  They also told me they had moved to a new shopping center.

So I shoot out of work and head to the store.  I knew the general area the new store was in but not exactly.  So I am driving around the shopping center, slowly, looking for the ATT logo.  I am heading out towards an exit and look off to my left and see an ATT branded truck so I immediately swing the wheel left.  The second I do I am rocked violently in the truck as I PLOW over the median.  Evidently with all of my head turning, I hadn’t noticed that a median had started leading out to the exit.  I was afraid I really f’d up the truck but after I parked, got out and did a visible survey, everything at least LOOKED ok. What a dumb ass.

So I walk in the door and ask if they still have the 16 gig phone.  The woman goes in the back and checks.  She comes out and tells me it is gone. SON OF A BITCH.  She tells me more may come in tomorrow and if they do she will call me. Ok, fine.  Well at first I was just going to accept the disappointment and head home, however I changed my mind on the drive up.  I hopped on the web on my Treo and found the numbers for other local ATT stores and started calling around.  Doing this took forever on the Treo, the Blazer browser and slow network speed makes browsing enough of a chore that many times I prefer to just not even bother with trying to do it on that phone.  After a few calls I find a store that has several in stock, sweet.  The only bad part was the store was 15 miles back towards town, oh well, I was on a mission now.

I get to the store and ask for Ashley, the girl I spoke to on the phone.  There were no other customers in the store, just me, Ashley and another clerk named Collin.  She seemed nice enough.  I explained to her the basics of what I wanted to do which was to add the Iphone to Ali’s Treo 750 on their family plan as well as utilizing my county employee discount and transferring my number over from Sprint to the Iphone.  I thought it may be a hassle trying to get everything straight that I wanted but Ashley made it seem like no big deal.  Then she actually tried to do it.

Well evidently there was some sort of snafu with getting the Sprint number ported over.  She was on the phone with the mother ship forever.  At first I was patient.  I started getting annoyed as I stood there and Ashley was on her personal cell phone first talking to her boyfriend and then repeatedly texting to others. It was just rude IMO.  I stood around for a good 45 minutes until the process was over.  Towards the end I asked for details about what the issue was as well as asking if this normally took this long.  She said it normally is very fast, I guess it was just my lucky day.  Finally the transfer was done and I walked out of there around 7.  With the family plan, we will wind up paying about the same or slightly less then we were with phones on the different carriers.

When I got home I got to play with the Iphone for a bit.  It took me the longest time to figure out how to do something as simple as dump music to it.  “Manage my music manually” is the magic setting you need.  I already knew how much of it worked from my Ipod Touch.  I’ll be tweaking it out slowly as free time allows. 

Sir Randall asked me my opinion about Heroes this season.  The short answer is “I still like it”, although there is a large BUT.  One of my biggest complaints about Heroes besides the RIDICULOUS amount of commercials they wedge into the show, is the vast amount of characters they have in the show.  Well this year they have expanded the cast of heroes (and villains) exponentially.  It is downright crazy, I bet we have been introduced to no less than 25 people with super powers at this point.  Throw on top of it the plot that constantly is shifting between present day and the future and the characters being flip flopped between good and evil roles, it just adds up to a jumbled mess.  Like I said, I enjoy the show but I’ll be very surprised if it survives past this season.  Tim Kring just has way too much going on in a show that has 30 some minutes of actual content.