I can’t believe that I’ve posted two hundred of these things over the course of nearly two years. Even more mind-boggling is that a few dozen people read them every week.
So, I’ve accomplished that, at least.
Wow.
Author: Karel Kerezman
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Google Talk Chat Logs
I fired up Trillian this morning, as I usually do once we’re out of the morning meeting or huddle at work, and immediately for every contact I chat with using Google’s system I started getting a slew of “error” messages, several at once every couple of minutes:
“This conversation is no longer off the record.”
That’s funny, I don’t remember ever going off the record to begin with… let alone several times per second.
It took some digging around Trillian’s forums, but I found the problem: Did you know that, by default, Google Talk chats are logged by Google?
No, I didn’t either. And I don’t want them logged.
If you feel the same way, go into your GMail web interface, click Settings, then go to the Chat settings and select “Never save chat history,” and Save Changes. This will also keep 3rd party chat clients from going nuts from time to time, apparently…
UPDATE: As the lovely Kylanath points out, you then probably want to go to the Chat “folder” in GMail and blow out everything in there. You may be amazed at how many are in there. Then, empty your Trash.
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Downside, Upside, Funnyside: Taxes
Downside: I went to get my taxes done today, to the tune of nearly-two-hundred-dollars to have a professional give everything the once-over it needs. (There are complications due to the divorce and, this year, due to Spud being a college lad.)
Upside: I’ve learned that having a fully-dependent child in college is good for your chances at a rebate. Quite good.
Funnyside: The great State of Oregon is giving me a refund this year (unlike last year, ugh)… a whopping, extravagant, don’t-spend-it-all-at-once… seven hundred… cents.
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Downside, Upside: Pants
Downside: $40, and that was on sale.
Upside: Pants that fit. (Thank you, Levi Strauss.)
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It’s fun to visit the O-D-M-V!
I received notice in the mail a few days ago indicating that my current Oregon state ID card is to expire on my forthcoming birthday. Having means, motive and opportunity now, I figured not to wait until late February to do anything about it.
So I gathered all of the bits and bobs needed. Social Security card? Check! State-issued, non-laminated birth certificate? Check! (Hospital-issued certs won’t cut it. No, I don’t know why.) Checkbook? Check! (They don’t take plastic.) Off I went, to the Oregon DMV “Express” over at Lloyd Mall.
The mall’s a much nicer place in the middle of a sunny school day, by the by.
The process itself went quickly, smoothly, painlessly (unless you count the $40 spent). On the other hand, two of my favorite things ever took place during my brief sojourn:
- “Are you waiting in line, ma’am?” “…No.” “Oh! Sorry about that…” I must have that kind of face. Or something. Last time I got the “ma’am” treatment was at a Starbucks near work. Sigh.
- “Carol?” “…Not quite.” It’s like being back in school all over again, when each new teacher (and there were many thanks to all of those address changes) couldn’t get my name right.
But hey, I’ll have a shiny new ID soon, and I won’t have to worry about this again until who-knows-when down the road…
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City of Heroes and Windows 7
This may not apply to many folks, but here goes:
If you’re running Windows 7, if you have an nVidia card but it isn’t an “uber” card, and you play City of Heroes, and you decide to upgrade to the 266-series drivers… make sure you remove the PhysX and “nVidia 3D” components via Programs & Features or risk abysmal performance.
I’ve had to run without FSAA, without Anisotropic, and with basically none of the Ultra Mode fancy stuff turned on since I converted to Windows 7 on my HP xw4400 workstation with the 9800 GT. Which struck me as a bit odd since I ran with most of the “UM” goodies enabled (at lower settings, mind you) under XP on the same hardware. (Yes, it was a fresh install. This isn’t my first rodeo, Mr. Stark.)
Tonight a CoH patch came down, and after that applied… I got less than one frame per second. Much less. I had to find the command line arguments so I could force a lower screen resolution just to get the Options display to appear. After an hour of frustrated tinkering & researching, I was getting ready to roll back to a much older driver release. While in Programs & Features getting ready to yank them out, I noticed the other two nVidia entries in the list. On a whim I pulled just those out, and rebooted.
And… City of Heroes ran like a dream, albeit with the reduced settings I’d been forced to adopt. So I turned on FSAA to 2x, which had previously brought the game to its knees.
Still smooth. And after I turned Anisotropic Filtering back on. And the Ultra Mode shadows. And bloom. And depth of field. (Yes, all of those were off to get any kind of performance, previously.)
I don’t know what the hell “nVidia 3D” is, but I suspect it doesn’t play nicely with City of Heroes, and I don’t have anything else that needs it. Good riddance. As for PhysX… if that was the culprit, I’ll live without it, thank you very much.