YTD Elite Qualifying Miles: 52,470

YTD Gold / Platinum Qualifying Segments: 40

Phew! I requalified for Platinum for next year (2006)!

Requalifying for Platinum next year is going to be super hard. I’ll be lucky if I even make Gold.

That reminds me, Noah Kagan of Facebook caught me today in the Microsoft cafeteria. Apparently he reads this blog! Hey Noah, if you want to learn more about Mileage Runs, this is the place to start: FlyerTalk Mileage Run.

This is a classic story: 14,586 miles in one week. This is also the same story where the now infamous JFK Tip Jar came to public light – brings back memories of what life was like before the TSA started manning security checkpoints.

Back by popular demand: this is a guide to conducting a
White Elephant Gift Exchange. It is divided into two parts, for the Host, and
for the Players. A flow chart follows to help document this process:

Host

Step 0: Even before the party, the host should
set expectations that this is a White Elephant Gift Exchange, that
use-challenged gifts should be expected, and to set a boundary for maximum
price.

Step 1: The host should give each guest a random
unique number. The usual pick a number from the bowl should suffice.

Step 2: The host should ensure that all the
presents for this White Elephant Gift Exchange are in one location.

Step 3: The game begins, and the host should call
the numbers sequentially.

Players

Players for this White Elephant Gift Exchange should follow this flow chart:

Today I dropped by the Balloon Inflation party around the American Museum of Natural History. They inflate the parade balloons the day before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Here are 5 nifty pictures out of the 37 that I took:

Hurray for Macy’s! (While I was there, I saw a metal crate labelled Bambergers. Wow! Remember Bambergers?)

Garfield’s here, but elsewhere there is a picture of his not-yet-inflated balloon.

I don’t know about you, but Pikachu looks kind of creepy here. (BTW, that girl is probably freezing to death… it was really cold).

Hey Ron, what’s going on?

Uh… Healthy? What, is Mr. Potato Head low carb now?

You can see all the pictures here.

Boy it was cold and windy – I took most of these pictures with gloves on. An added challenge. Definitely fun though – with lots and lots of free balloons.

If you’re using MSN Messenger (which you should! I use AIM, YIM, and MSN at the same time independently), be sure to add encarta@conversagent.com as a buddy.

Once you do that, you can ask encarta some questions directly from a chat window!

Here’s a chat I had with it today:

Dennis says:
what is the capital of belarus
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
The capital of Belarus is Minsk.

Dennis says:
what is the population of india?
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
1,080,264,400 people live in India.

Dennis says:
what is the heisenberg uncertainty principle?
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
Encarta Answer:
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: : Uncertainty Principle, in quantum mechanics, theory stating that it is impossible to specify simultaneously the position and momentum of a particle,…

Dennis says:
What is the approximate airspeed and velocity of an unlaiden swallow carrying a coconut by the husk?
Encarta® Instant Answers says:
[snip]

You’ll have to ask it that last question to find out what it says

http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

Here are the secret numbers and tips to bypass IVR phone menus to get to a human. Do you know a new cheat? Suggest it here. For more info or to see how you can help, click here.

Good to know!

Update 1: Fix the URL to make it appear.

As a (former?) Mac user, it truly is amazing to me how hard some things are to do in Windows. For example, let’s say you have a 20 gig drive and you want to upgrade to a 120 gig drive – this is the exact situation I find myself at my parents place in NY right now.

On a Mac, this would be ultra easy. Remember that on a Mac, you can boot up from practically any device, and you can image any drive to any drive, and that you can tell the hardware which drive to boot off of.

So on a Mac, you would do this:
1. Buy and install new hard drive. Format.
2. Download Carbon Copy Cloner which is free/$5 donationware (or you could use the apps that are bundled with the Mac – CCC is just a 1 click wrapper around them.)
3. Run CCC to clone drive with about 4 clicks. (no need to install)
4. In control panels, tell the startup control panel to use the new drive.
5. Shutdown to remove old drive.
6. Reboot.

On my parents PC, this is what I’ve done so far:
1. Buy and install new hard drive. Format.

2. Download DriveImage XML (which a few folks at MS recommended because its free)

3. Install DriveImage XML

4. Run DriveImage XML and tell it to clone the C: to the D:. Go past some strange errors. This will take 5 hours.

5. Shutdown to remove old drive.

6. Reboot.

7. Oh… the PC says that there are no bootable volumes. [You might want to just hit page down now...]

8. Go through the drill of trying the permutations of jumper settings and cable positions. Makes no difference. Damn.

9. Wonders if it was so smart to clone a drive while booted from it. Reads up on BartPE.

10. Reinstall old hard drive.

11. Download Bart PE (which is fantastic tool for making self booting CDs)

12. Install Bart PE

13. Run Bart PE to create a bootable CD with Drive Image XML

14. Reboot using new CD and use Drive Image XML to clone drive. This time, it only takes 1 hour.

15. Remove old hard drive.

16. Reboot. Oh… the PC still says there are no bootable volumes.

17. Go read up on MBRs and get frustrated. Looks for a WinXP install CD to try and use the recovery console.

18. Oh wait… this is WinXP Pro and the CDs that came with this machine were restore only. (not that I could find them anyway.)

19. Find a WinXP Home CD and use that to launch the recovery console.

20. Try running fixboot.

21. Try running fixmbr.

22. Reboot and eject CD. Oh… the PC still says there are no bootable volumes.

23. Hm… maybe this mysterious MBR thing is still hosed. I know, I’ll start installing WinXP home up to the point that the hard drive can be booted and then reimage it with the old drive.

24. Start install WinXP home

25. When it reboots and boots from the hard drive, interrupt and repeat step 14.

26. Reboot. Oh the PC boots up from the new drive!!! Oh… wait… now it hangs at the welcome screen.

27. Connect the old drive and try rebooting.

28. The PC boots up all the way, though the old hard disk is getting quite the work out.

29. Hm… Drive Management says that the new drive is using the old drive as a Page file store

30. I know how to fix that- I’ll just tell Windows not to use a Page file.

31. Reboot… and now the PC hangs at the welcome screen no matter if the old drive is connected or not. ARGH.

32. Wait… how do I get the PC to boot from the old drive now to erase the new drive?? (panic!)

33. Oh I know, I’ll use the recovery console again. Put CD in the drive and reboot.

34. The PC reads the CD, and then decides that reading the hard drive is better. Boots into the hard drive where it hangs.

35. Remove new drive. PC boots fine into the old drive.

36. Now I’m screwed. I guess they’re stuck with their old drive.

I thought I was stupid, until I started searching around the internets for solutions to this problem – a lot of people run into this same problem where they clone/ghost a Windows drive, and it never boots up again!

Windows XP: XP refuses to boot after ghosting

I recently ghosted a machine and now it doesn’t want to boot.

Originally the OS was on a 3gb partition which quickly ran out of space. So I ghosted the partition, deleted the old partition, made a larger partition, and put the ghost back in. Now it won’t get past the screen that says “windows xp” in the middle, just before the login screen. I can move the mouse around all I want, and ctrl alt del does nothing. It does the same thing when I boot into safe mode. I used Ghost 8.0, so it’s not a compatability issue.

Why is microsoft torturing me? I’m stumped.

Hey that sounds like the problem I have! The answer? It requires a $9.99 monthly subscription to find out. Seriously.

Do you have the answer?

Tripso.com, The last honest travel site

When navigating around Hong Kong, you need to watch your step. Not only does the country not require ramps for accessibility, Buddhists consider them bad luck. They believe bad spirits cannot climb steps but they can come up a ramp, so every building will have some small step at the entrances (go ahead, check — I dare you to find one that doesn’t).

Oh I wondered about that. I nearly fell flat on my face on one tiring day when I tripped while entering a department store on Hong Kong island.

AjaxWhois.com – Ajax-based domain lookup and Whois for most TLDs

Oh neato… an ajax fashion WHOIS solution!