All Your Base Are Belong To Us — The Kip Lange Homepage

Okay. Just found this lurking around. Eudora must have thrown this poor fellow in with my spam filters, and he deserves more than a two-month old post about fixing your firewall with a filed called sharedaccess.reg. And he deserves a response.

His name is Molinar and this is what he had to say:

Just passing by, but this post makes me shiver: if a program requires me to do this kind of stuff and open up my PC like this, it’s not getting into my ‘puter, to peer or not to peer.Seriously, applying semi-random changes to the registry? From a file found on the internet? and furthermore it requires your firewall to be disabled? Sheesh, hell no.Or maybe I read it wrong. I hope so.

Okay. First, I’ll clear a couple of things up. Sharedaccess.reg is, I believe, the original, clean version of your registry settings regarding your firewall. And you only are going to be using this if your firewall is malfunctioning. My particular version comes from a fairly legit Windows tweak site (read the hyperlink, follow it). If your firewall is up and working or up and not working by choice, then don’t download this file. But it saved me. That’s all I can say. I do not doubt your approach as a purist, Molinar. Purists make more money than me and end up managing networks much faster than I do, I’ll tell you that. But the simple answer to why I posted this is: I am not a purist. By default, if you’re getting a patch from my site, and I don’t say it’s from Microsoft, you better check it. A purist does that. I just fly by the seat of my pants. I get my desktop hijacked 8,000 times and have purists tell me over and over that there’s not solution except reformatting and reinstalling the OS and I just LOVE the problem and I sit there for hours until I have erased every trace of the hijack/trojan/worm/nasty thing.

Okay. That’s beside the point. The sharedacces.reg file works. I’ll vouch for it. Sure, tweaking your computer without really knowing what you’re doing is dangerous. But you can’t debate the fact that some legitimate Windows software can be more dangerous than a lot of innocous spyware out there. 🙂

So, point taken. Caveat Emptor with the file. It worked for me and it continues to work. But I like playing with fire — as an explicit example, I hardly ever use a firewall (go ahead, hack me, I’m not worth anything). This patch *will* restore your XP firewall to its original settings. But if you’re worried because it’s doing gnarly things to your registry, don’t worry, just look somewhere else. My one goal in sharing the file is to help people who fell into the same problem I did and needed a fix. So I took advice from ANOTHER board somewhere else that referenced this and decided to share it. I take no responsibility if it turns your powerful high-end PC into a toaster with a LCD screen.

Here’s a topic that’s always bugged me. Read all about different people’s takes on cleaning their LCD screens over at this fellow’s blog. Personally, I’ve broken the golden rule and used Windex and paper towels before, but generally I, myself, take a damp cotton rag, wipe the screen down as best as I can, and dry it with a piece of flannel or a dry cotton rag.

Frankly, for all the outcry against Windex and paper towels, I’m guessing that unless you want your LCD monitor to outlast you, it’s not the end of the world to use them. But that’s just my opinion with no disclaimers. Windex has ammonia in it, and ammonia is some nasty stuff.

Okay. It’s finally here. The first update for Madden 2007 rosters. Now, I don’t know where you go to get it for a PC version, but those of us with consoles — just log in with the network adapter and it will download them automatically. Be sure to save.

There are still some problems, like, say, Deion Branch is still starting for the Patriots, but at least it’s better. Trust me. Would I lie to you?

I went completely apeshit buying incense online. Ever since Pier 1 has decided to cut back on it, I’ve been getting desperate.

So first I ordered a bunch of twenty-stick packs online. Okay. Good. That’ll hold me.

Then I light the nag champa and realize how much I love the stuff (an acquired taste, I suppose). So I go straight back to where I bought the original incense and order like 500 nag champa sticks. They arrived today looking like a brick.

If there’s ever a devastating circumstance that drags the word into the Dark Ages, rest assured, dear reader, that while governments fail and people resort to cannibalism — I will have some incense around to lighten the mood.

Two quick football notes. First, I cannot believe the Patriots, after dominating the Jets, let up and let them score 14 points on them. Second, I think that comeback by Eli Manning in the Giants game was phantasmagorically fantastic. I like Eli. I just don’t like him when he’s playing us or screwing with our schedule.

One last thing…my fantasy teams, which have not been doing well (DAMN YOU LARRY JOHNSON, DAMN YOU SHAUN ALEXANDER) face an interesting situation in one of my games this week. Seven players have a bye week. I had to juggle REALLY carefully to get that schedule back on track.

Ah well. That’s all for now.

A little while back, I said I finally “caved” and bought an expensive video card. Well, let me tell you right now, my nVidia GeForce 7800 was worth every penny.

It speeds ALL sorts of things up, it really does. You need the RAM for it — I’ve got 1.5 gig, which is just a bit over what it probably wants — but RAM is cheap.

The games, of course, are stunningly beautiful. Especially first or third-person shooters. The ambiance in F.E.AR., for instance, is unbelievable.

So, anyway, it’s worth it. All my tightwad tactics came to nothing. It’s also really easy to install — just goes right in your AGP port where your old card (assuming you weren’t an idiot and bought a computer with a PCI video card) went. The only slight hold up is that you need to free up a power cable (they fit into the ends of hard drives, those thinga) and power up the card mostly because of the internal fan it uses to cool down when it’s processing memory-hungry applications.

Ah well, that’s all. 🙂

That’s all that needs to be said. Sort of.

Miami 0-2, everyone was sure they’d win the division, or tie with New England.

Patriots 2-0 and put on quite a show today, especially with their new dual-back offense.

I’m not a gambling man, but I’ll take the Pats winning the division easily.

I feel football is more important than 9/11 candlelight vigils. So sue me.

Okay. So now us Patriots fans know something important: Laurence Maroney is the real deal. The kid can dance all over the place. We also know Gostkowski can kick a field goal. So we’re solid on that.

So why did we look so crappy for so long against the Bills and barely eke out a victory?

I don’t know. Some are saying Brady is looking for a Branch and can’t find one (since Deion’s hidden somewhere deep within the fires of Mount Doom insisting he get a Ring of Power if he’s going to show up).

There’s no doubt in my mind Brady forced a few throws, and his interception wasn’t fun to look at. Nor was the first play of the game, the fumble return by the Bills.

Okay. Here’s what I think. I think our offensive line didn’t get it together until sometime in the 3rd quarter. I think our defense once again went out there and won the day with that safety. After all, that’s the two points we won by.

That’s all I’m going to say. The rest should be obvious. Okay. I’ll say it. We need to get the offense in sync, especially our passing game and our offensive line. Our running game is looking good, but that ain’t all there is to football.

All in all, I suffered four or five heart attacks during the game, and have had to seek medical attention.

Okay, this is all the information I have. As of today, September 03, there are no roster updates available online from EA to download. You can scour the net and find some people who have noted all the roster changes so far and can guide you to manually editing them. I don’t think it’s worth it, myself, because I am betting that a roster update will be released by EA somewhere very near the September 7th opening game. That’s my two cents. They won’t want to release a roster update until the roster is finalized. I also believe I remember this was the way it was done last year.

Which is a shame, because I’d like to get my new Pats kicker and Junior Seau into the mix automatically (as well as playing other teams with correct rosters). But there will be an update out, don’t worry.

And for XBox/XBox 360 users, as far as I can tell, the rumor that you will have to pay for updates is totally wrong. I highly doubt they’re going to give them to us PS2 fans for free and turn around and charge you.

Ah, Madden time. When all of us gaming geeks leap onto the new Madden — even though usually (and in this case) the only real change is the rosters. But we don’t care. We buy it anyway.

This is probably the last Madden we’re ever going to see on current-gen systems, and to that I say: Good. Because Madden 2007 has some serious problems that I attribute to too much going on inside my PS2s limited computing capacity.

Here’s the deal: in a game, the damn thing will freeze up or skip a hell of a lot, usually when trying to read multiple tracks (multiple audio and video). This is really annoying.

When I first started, it was freezing so badly that I had to whack the top of the PS2 to get the DVD moving a little so the laser could pick it up. After that, I got fed up, thought my PS2 was all gunky again (it was), took it apart and cleaned the laser (I’ve written about this before — if you want to do this, it works, but it voids most warranties and you should really only do it if you know what you’re doing and/or you’re comfortable with electronics).

This worked, meaning, it got rid of the really bad freezes, but it still skips and freezes a little bit. I went searching on the web for people having similar problems and I came across a WHOLE lot of XBox/XBox 360 owners who said that not only was their copy of Madden freezing on them but it also somehow seemed to screw the machine up and make other games freeze. I don’t really know if I believe that, but anything’s possible.

Anyway, I just want to alert Madden fans that this year’s copy of Madden is a little frustrating to play because of the little glitches. But it’s still worth it, I have to say.

Okay. You’ve probably heard this story: after fourteen years, Paramount has decided to sever all ties with Tom Cruise, citing his insane behavior off the set. Including, of course, his famous never-retracted bashing of Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants (Scientology, Cruise’s religion, doesn’t let you take an aspirin).

In addition, some feel that the traditional “star power” in Hollywood may be waning a bit, which also warms the cockles of my heart.

But here’s the real kicker. Right after dumping Cruise, Paramount turned to “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who were involved in a rumble with Cruise and Scientology, and inked them to a two-picture (live action) movie deal.

They’re not writing either movie, however, from what I’ve read. Parker will direct and Stone will produce.

The names of the two movies are My All-American, a comedy based around a high school, and Giant Monsters Attack Japan! which will use some good ol’ “rubber suit” special effects.

Ahh, sometimes life is good.