Computer mysteriously rebooting - solution

My laptop (Compaq Presario x1000) started rebooting by itself in November... The problem was getting worse every week. I was convinced it was a hardware issue. So I used HP's online chat support to ask for help.

First, they asked me to uninstall WinXP's SP2... I knew that wouldn't work but figured I would follow their advice as a necessary step before they would authorize a "return to depot" warranty repair.

So I uninstalled SP2... A painful process that left me without drivers for many key components - most notably my display. I struggled with minimal display settings and made it back to the Compaq/Hp website where I downloaded the latest drivers and re-installed them.

About 5 hours later, while I was in the middle of a long email, the friggin computer rebooted again. I was pretty upset. I thought more carefully about when the rebooting was happening and came to the conclusion that the rebooting was related somehow to Internet Explorer.

So I fired up my installed version of Firefox and set it as my default browser, then I "uninstalled" Internet Explorer. You can't actually uninstall IE (they say you can but you can't). I went through the "uninstall" motions anyway.

Seemed promising for a while... But two days later, it rebooted again.

I was actually happy about this... I figured it would be enough for the Compaq/HP support people to authorize a repair. So back online I went and began a chat session. Instead - they solved the problem. They advised me to right-click on the "My Computer" icon, select Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, and unclick the restart automatically option box. Then, back at the Advanced tab, they advised me to disable the error reporting option.

It's been over a week so far - no unintentional reboots.

MSN Search, Yahoo, and Google

Big news today that another search provider has entered the race to be as good as Google.com... Microsoft's MSN search at http://search.msn.com/ has performed very well in my tests.

Meanwhile - Google announced Q4 earnings of 1.03 Billion USD. Pretty stunning.

You know what irritates me? Google still hasn't indexed this site. MSN - within 24 hours. Yahoo, within 24 hours.... Google - 3 weeks so far.

How to slice a Mango

I've seen so many people struggle awkwardly to slice a mango. I know the only way I can save the world is to write a quick guide to slicing mangoes.

NEVER PEEL A MANGO.

Find the stem of the mango...It's the part that connects it to the tree. Now, hold the fruit so that the edge (they have a more narrow edge... you can find it!) is lined up with you (the edge should be perpendicular to your body).

Put your knife (a nice sharp knife) at the stem and cut slowly down through the fruit, hugging the giant seed inside. You should be able to easily lob off one half of the fruit this way, then simply rotate the fruit and repeat the process for the other side.

Each sliced half should now be halved again along its length. Then, clip your knife between the skin and fruit, cutting along the length of the fruit segment with your knife as close to the skin as possible. Bingo.. repeat as necessary (3 more times) and you're done. See the pictures below, or see this video. Sorry, the video is crude, but my digital camera's movie feature isn't the best, and there is little chance to edit.

Review – The Forgotten

Spoiler Warning: This review reveals the entire story of The Forgotten. This isn't difficult because there isn't much to the story. The Forgotten falls into the X-Files trap of presenting a “mystery” as too complex for anyone to understand – and that seems to be as far as they went when working out the story line.

Here's a fictional recreation of a conversation in the concept development department at Sony Pictures.

“Okay Okay – I got it. There's this group of kids who get abducted by aliens. But the aliens are in cahoots with the NSA and they trick the parents into thinking their kids never existed.”

“Whatever – sounds fine – let's make Julianne Moore the lead. She won't stop calling me. How about Chinese for lunch?”

The Forgotten gets 3 out of 10 stars from Thirdsite.com.

Good Parts:
Surprise car accident wakes you up just at the part where you start to fall asleep.

Bad Parts:
Poor plot development
Who sends their kids to camp in a plane?
No scary aliens... Just a big vacuum in the sky that sucks people who know too much into the upper atmosphere.