JoeBlog

I’m ditching Vista. It’s a horrible operating system. I just need to get things done and Vista = anti-productivity. I spend more time messing with the operating system than I do on things I need to accomplish. Furthermore the future of Vista is not that great. The final release of Vista dropped the best features in order to meet the release deadline. As a result the operating system is half baked and reminds me of Windows ME. Yes, Vista is that bad.

Today I had to call Microsoft to activate my copy of Vista Ultimate (the online method failed). I could barely understand the foreign customer service rep that told me that my Installation ID was ”invalid”. What this translates to is that Microsoft was not willing to activate my legitimate copy of Vista that I paid for. It was at this point that I told the representative that I’d just go download a pirated copy of Vista and avoid all the hassles of being a legit customer. What a bunch of choches. This was the last straw.

So, I am saying goodbye to Vista. I don’t recommend it. Go with Mac, or stick with Windows XP which is rock solid and has proven reliability and excellent driver support.

UPDATE: I was finally able to get Vista activated after 2 1/2 hours on the phone with Microsoft. The solution was to give me a new CD-Key. In other words they had no clue why Vista wouldn’t activate on my original CD-Key.

UPDATE 2: I was called by a manager at Microsoft. He apologized for the all the issues I had with activation and spent 10 minutes on the phone with me collecting feedback on what I thought could make the experience better. Props to Microsoft for total ownership and follow through of support issues.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I want to compile a list of personal development and productivity sites. I’m looking for sites with real, practical information that you can use in your everyday life, sites that motivate you to be a better person, to try new things. Examples: 43 Folders, Steve Pavlina. Please point me to your favorites!

Here is what I’ve found so far:

• http://www.stevepavlina.com/ - Highly recommended, great content!
• The Occupational Adventure
• http://www.intense-workout.com
• http://www.positivityblog.com/
• Life Coaches Blog
• List of many sites
• Lifehacker 
• http://www.lifehack.org/ - The lesser known sibling of lifehacker.
• http://www.getmotivation.com/
• http://www.accomplishlife.com/
• List of various personal development sites

What are your suggestions?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 I am extremely upset right now! I spent over 2 hours writing the “about” section for this website. I was using the editor built-in to Wordpress. When I clicked on the button to publish it errored out and when I used the back button on the browser the page was expired. I lost all of what I had written. I hate that. It’s happened in the past and so usually I write posts in an offline editor so I don’t lose everything in case of an error like what just happened to me. Wordpress team: Where is the auto-save?! I am not happy. Someone please tell me there is a way to recover what I wrote.

BTW, I use Microsoft’s online version of Outlook (OWA) which is guilty of the same problem. I’ve written lengthy emails on the online editor only to have the page error upon hitting send. This is insane. I guess I’ll just get into the habit of copying the entire post to the clipboard before posting. I am frustrated and upset that 2 hours is totally wasted. I’m going to bed before I go nuts.

UPDATE: Brian Blood over at Network Jack posted about how he modified the Wordpress database to recover the last 2 revisions of a post. It wont help me in this case but I’ll implement his method for preventing the problem in the future.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!