I just installed and am almost using TrueCrypt 5.1 on my laptop. Highly recommended. I have it on my work laptop as well. I say almost, because it stopped at 95.229% into encrypting with a data error (CRC). It will not proceed past this so I'm only mostly encrypted. Needless to say, I'm a bit worried about this, but I plan on trying out SpinRite. I'll report on that in the future.

[Update: Worked well enough to fix that problem but I'm not totally satisfied with it.]

Just uninstalled Windows Live Photo Gallery. Patches, failed patches, reliance on SQL Server compact edition and hanging wlxquicktimecontrolhost.exe and limited usefulness meant it just wasn't even good enough to ignore. Ouch.

I noticed this problem while downloading sessions from the mix08 site (visitmix.com) in iPod format so I can play them on my iPhone.

One of the sessions I watched was on the history of the ribbon (UX09). I've blasted the ribbon in the past, and I still don't like it, but after watching that session and considering the problem they were trying to solve, I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the level of thought that went into it.

My wife and boy are out of town for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd give the bus a try. Why now? So I can have a vehicle that I leave at home and another that I leave at work. I really have to have a vehicle available at work in case I need to get to a client site, although I could probably get away with a nano car like the Smart.

Phoenix has a pretty nice public transportation site (http://valleymetro.org) which includes a trip planner. Unfortunately, the way the schedules work out, I have a fair chance of missing my connection and if I do, it will be a half an hour before the next bus. Actually, Monday it was 45 minutes! Grrr.

What would make the bus workable would be:

• a spare car I could leave at work
• enough busses to where I don't have to time my trip - one every fifteen minutes would do.
• all stops lit and covered for shade and rain
• if I organized my stuff so I could work on either my work laptop or my personal one for anything so I wouldn't have to lug either one around but I could still reach across to get stuff off of either one

What would make the bus cool would be:

• an easier payment system, like a card that is connected to a credit card - the new all day card is nice, but having to pay $2.50 in cash is kinda clumsy. At minimum, $5 cash should get you an all day and another all day card that can be spent later.
• a way to associate a preferred route into your card which will automatically signal for stop - probably difficult to make this foolproof, but having it there mainly to prevent you from forgetting and overshooting your destination.
• a way to text you ahead of time if there are problems with your route.
• walk tunnels or bridges at connectioning points
• real time bus location

I can't believe a type cool on the same line as bus. Al Gore should give me a ride for that.

Regarding http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946486

Yesterday, Microsoft released an update to Windows Live Photo Gallery. I went to install it and it failed. I wasn't too worried about it since I really don't use it, but then Automatic Updates kept pestering me about it, so I figured I needed to fix it.

I looked in the event log and found the following failures:

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    MsiInstaller
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    1024
Date:        1/23/2008
Time:        12:32:06 PM
User:        HS5\HS
Computer:    HS5
Description:
Product: Windows Live Photo Gallery - Update 'Windows Live Photo Gallery [12.0.1321.0110]' could not be installed. Error code 1603. Windows Installer can create logs to help troubleshoot issues with installing software packages. Use the following link for instructions on turning on logging support: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=23127

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 7b 32 35 37 45 34 34 30   {257E440
0008: 46 2d 37 38 31 46 2d 34   F-781F-4
0010: 35 39 42 2d 39 41 36 38   59B-9A68
0018: 2d 41 30 38 37 32 42 38   -A0872B8
0020: 30 43 31 44 36 7d 20 7b   0C1D6} {
0028: 34 43 31 45 38 46 32 44   4C1E8F2D
0030: 2d 41 39 36 39 2d 34 38   -A969-48
0038: 32 41 2d 42 42 35 31 2d   2A-BB51-
0040: 33 33 45 37 43 43 43 31   33E7CCC1
0048: 41 39 45 39 7d 20 31 36   A9E9} 16
0050: 30 33                     03     

and...

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    MsiInstaller
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    11721
Date:        1/23/2008
Time:        12:31:44 PM
User:        HS5\HS
Computer:    HS5
Description:
Product: Windows Live Photo Gallery -- Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action: CA_InstallD3DX, location: C:\DOCUME~1\HS\LOCALS~1\Temp\WLXPL_DX\dxsetup.exe, command: /silent

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 7b 32 35 37 45 34 34 30   {257E440
0008: 46 2d 37 38 31 46 2d 34   F-781F-4
0010: 35 39 42 2d 39 41 36 38   59B-9A68
0018: 2d 41 30 38 37 32 42 38   -A0872B8
0020: 30 43 31 44 36 7d         0C1D6} 

Apparently the update was relying on being able to reexec DirectX setup from the temp directory install. Well, I clean my temp directories, so that didn't work. I simply went to download.microsoft.com, searched for DirectX, found the redistributable version (not the web install) downloaded it and extracted it to the directory it was expecting "C:\DOCUME~1\HS\LOCALS~1\Temp\WLXPL_DX\" in this case. I then let the update run again and it worked just fine.

Hope this helps someone.

I was just listening to a podcast (Windows Weekly from twit.tv) about the latest drop of Windows Live (http://windowslive.com) and decide to try it out. I'm posting this blog entry from Windows Live Writer, which was crazy easy to setup. I'll be trying out some of the other stuff over the next few days and I'll report back on my experience.