Okay, this is sad, but until I get the pen rendering worked out, Ink just hurts my eyes. And as I’m the only reader, I’m taking pity on myself and *amending* my blog rules. (Amending. Not breaking.)

Two common suggestions to increase voting turn-out at largely meaningless mid-term voting:

• Make it mandatory
• Make it a federal holiday

Neither are likely, let’s be honest. They make too much sense.

My new favorite idea to improve voting turn-out comes from the Freakonomics blog:  Abolish polling and all the navel-gazing, run-up bullshit that makes voting an underwhelming civil grudge. Make it a mystery again—popular convergence, not mass manuipulation. I’d sure like to feel less like a mindless drone, voting right along with my demographic, socio-economic and homophylic group. I did get a kick out of voting against my theoretical self-interest in our Washington State propositions offering up prudish interpretations of the estate tax and lap dances. Note to Seattle’s *two* strip-clubs:  lap dances okay within a 4-foot radius!

Then again, if polling, punditry and patronization were abolished, what would “The Daily Show” & Colbert mock?

Mock, mock, mock. “Don’t knock my smock or I’ll clean your clock.“

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I’m still having inordinate trouble with Windows Live Writer (beta), MS .NET Framework 2.0 and Tabby OS. It seems the 2.0 Framework won’t fully install or uninstall on my tabby. It consistently stalls on a number of .dll files, followed by an endless stall with:

Error 25015.Failed to install assembly ‘C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.5021\System.EnterpriseServices.dll’ because of system error: parameters incorrect”

And/or:

“C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\RegSvcs.exe” /bootstrapi

Depending.

After a few days of looping through the install/uninstall attempt—plus one bad day where the installer opened about 100 versions of itself when I went to get a anxiety-reducing beer—I found a blog entry by Aaron Stebner detailing both of these .NET install errors, plus a home-built .exe for removing a faulty .NET install (1.1 or 2.0). It works, but now I can’t reinstall, due to a different list of files errors and permission conflicts.

I’ll continue slogging through the 20% of his blog post that I understand. Grand total, I’ve probably spent 30 hours troubleshooting, with no real progress. End in sight? Ability to ink anywhere? I’m no longer hopeful.

Why post this? Because it once again emphasizes to me how deeply alienating and fragile Windows really is. I’m a computer geek and I can’t figure out what’s wrong. KB articles are so superficial, self-referencing or deeply technical, they are of no help. Thank heavens for bloggers summarizing their own technical trials & tribulations. So, next I probably need to reinstall an OS somewhere…?

(Geek-amusement bonus points for the spell-check on Live Writer not recognizing the word “blogger”.)

picayune | permalink | comments (0)

It’s my third post, and I’m already departing from my rules. Who didn’t see that coming? The reason I’m posting in text is a recent install of Tablet PC OS temporarily broke my ability to post in ink. I now rock the Tabby OS (woo), but can’t get beyond its text-replacement mode. Also—even with the right OS, Live Writer and all the various updates recommended and required—I still can’t get Ed Holloway’s plugin to work with my setup. I can see the files in the /plugins/ dir, but they don’t show up in Live Writer’s “plugins” preferences, nor do the features appear in the UI. To add insult to injury, I can see the plugin working correctly on my work machine, which doesn’t rock Tabby OS (yet).

The recommended .NET update froze on me, so I’m guessing that’s where the hitch in my giddyup comes from. More—in Ink—if I get the it worked out.

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