DwightDeGroff.com - Tech that Matters

Has your external hard drive or USB drive changed “letters” in Windows XP?

Follow these steps to change the Drive letter:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
5. Click Change.
6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

Tech that Matters – You (or your kids) could be arrested for texting in a text-free zone!!!? (snark)

Mind your manners, people – a 14-year-old girl was reportedly charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to cease texting in class and then hiding the phone down her pants.

The real question here: will they forcibly collect her DNA for this misdemeanor?

I blogged earlier about our tendency, as humans, to reveal more than we ought in on-line communication through portals like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Yet, these are but a few of the ways in which we often fail to safeguard the rights to privacy that we defend and claim to cherish. A NY Times article says that researchers refer to this as the “privacy paradox”.

normally sane people have inconsistent and contradictory impulses and opinions when it comes to their safeguarding their own private information.

Today, Google announced a new service called Google Latitude – a new service for mobile devices and “iGoogle” that allows users to views the location of their friends and loved ones (who have opted to share the information). It’s a pretty cool idea – basically you (the user) can opt to other specified users to see your geographic location and vice-versa. Purportedly, this information can be adjusted per “friend” to show the best approximation of your location, a city-level view, hide your location entirely or even to provide intentional false information. “No honey, I’m not out boozing it up with the guys… I’m… at work… <typetypetype> … check Latitude.”

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As you can see from my “ultra-cool, ultra-trendy xfire gamer profile” I’ve been playing a bit of Call of Duty 4, lately. It’s a First-Person Shooter, that basically takes place in modern times. A few weeks ago, I told my friend Jerm that it was high-time he got me hooked on a video game for a change of pace. He poked around for a while, but finally suggested COD4.

I haven’t enjoyed the multiplayer aspects of a FPS for a long time, so it’s been nice to get back into it. Out of 55 ranks, today I hit 54, so I’m nearly maxed out. The simple, but significant “RPG” elements in the game create a variety that I’ve found lacking in many other games of this type. So far the re-playability has been good in multiplayer.

We’ll see how it “plays out” as I try to figure out what I really want to be spending my time and resources on. Any suggestions? I love comments – if you’re reading this, let me know. Prease?

This is post #1 for the week, as promised. Since it’s “so early” in the week you may even get… TWO!