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Well, at least my cat likes my dog. And vice versa. Mostly. Actually, they usually don’t pay too much attention to each other, but now and then one will offer a small gesture of friendliness. I was lucky to catch this one. It’s my first attempt to edit a video with Microsoft MovieMaker (OK for free software, but the interface is a little quirky and limited). It’s also my first contribution to YouTube. I’m the man.

Yesterday I spotted a Rover 75 driving through downtown San Diego. I’m not sure that Rover has every sold anything but SUVs in the US. From what I’ve read, the model was discontinued in 2005 after the company went bankrupt. The Chinese apparently bought some rights to manufacturer a few Rover models, and a few days ago, Ford bought the rights to the Rover name from BMW.

That still doesn’t explain why I saw one in San Diego. It’s supposedly a pretty sweet car; maybe an British expat decided it was worth the hassle to import one here?

I’ve remained a fan of Google, despite their transformation into a behemoth. Picassa, which Google distributes for free, is easily my favorite image manager (much better than the last version of Adobe’s Photoshop Album). Sadly, I think I have to admit that Microsoft’s Live Local is a bit cooler than Google maps. I say this largely because of the birdseye function on local live. Initially, it was limited to a few areas, but as you can see above, they’ve expanded it to include my little neighborhood as well.

I can tell that this image was taken on a Wednesday before noon within the last few months, maybe May. I say that because my old Maxima is parked across the street; I didn’t start parking there until I bought my GS 400 in April, and I sold the Maxima last month (farewell, faithful friend).

Trash day is Wednesday, and the lack of a car in the driveway indicates we are both at work. Watch out, Sherlock Holmes.

Find the blueish swimming pool (the rest look green) and go slightly northwest; that’s my house. You can see the Impala and Toronado parked in front. (I only drive them once a week or so).

You can also see how a few of the neighbors behind ourselves pimped out their houses. The one to the right of the blue-pool house looks like it could’ve been airlifted in from La Jolla. I’d love to put a second story on our house; we’ve have a smokin’ view of the mountains to the east if we did. Sadly, I don’t have a 100k burning a hole in my pocket.

(Right click on the picture

I love freeware. People spend so much money on virus protection and spyware protection, yet there are great free solutions out there, including AVG Free edition and Avast! Home edition (which even has an available 64-bit version).
I’ve used registry cleaners before. Messing with the registry is always risky, and most cleaners suggest that you make a backup before messing with the registry, which I always do. I’ve used the Crap Cleaner registry cleaner with no problems on a variety of OS’s, including Windows XP 64. I decided to give RegSeeker a spin.
I found the interface to RegSeeker to be somewhat unintuitive, but eventually figured it out. I backed up the registry, and followed it’s suggestions for deletion. Now my Windows XP 64 install won’t boot. Period. Not even in Safe Mode. I tried repairing it with the install CD, but that didn’t help either. As far as I know, the backup of the registry is useless you can at least boot to safe mode. Luckily, I didn’t have any important data on there, but it will take hours to rebuild it. Thanks RegSeeker, you piece of garbage.