Ed Cottrell

  • Computer Annoyances

    When I’m writing a program or web script, I usually test it on my own system before deploying it to its final destination (a web server, application server, etc.). Tonight, I made the unpleasant and rather disturbing discovery that Norton AntiVirus 2005, if it’s set to scan outgoing mail, may scan memory before a program…

  • Illinois’ 1st Congressional District Race

    I got tired of seeing Phillip Jackson ads (and having his fliers stuck under my windshield wipers), so I decided to figure out just who is running for the House of Representatives in this district. I’m still registered to vote in North Carolina, so one could say I have no horse in this race, except…

  • Civ IV – Problems and Play

    Well, I got Civilization IV running on my system, so I have wasted a lot of time, this weekend. Getting it to run was insane, however. For reference, I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 with the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 (32MB) graphics card and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. These are the steps I had to take…

  • There Goes My Life

    I posted a few days ago that I didn’t think Civilization IV would run on my system without a costly video card upgrade. Well, fortunately or unfortunately, thanks to the good folks at the Civilization Fanatics’ Forums, I found a driver for my current video card that fixed my problems and means I will probably…

  • Further Proof…

    … that about half the population will vote for about anything: the Miami-Dade County School Board voted 5-4 to fire six teachers and accept the resignations of 26 others. The teachers in question had all paid to obtain continuing education credits, rather than taking actual courses, and then lied about the credits by representing them…