…but fortunately not too often I come across a command I have not seen/heard of yet.
One of them I just saw in another Blog Post. Below can be used to export all installed System Drivers to a CSV file. So here just for personal safe-keeping. Might come in handy some day.
driverquery /FO csv /v > text.csv
so now I am two days into my new Job with S1 and I still feel like they are feeding me with a Fire Hose. This is not a complaint at all, there is just a lot of information to absorb but I do believe that it is a good company and that I will enjoy working there.
Besides some obvious stuff I don’t want to get to here, I also have the feeling that they value the individual more than my previous employer. I know. That sounds bad. I like my previous and had some wonderful colleagues there but the environment itself was simply outdated.
Though pretty much everyone is sitting in cubes, even the Director I report to – it is modern. It appears fresh and not only because it is new to me. What the company is doing for the employee makes them enjoy being there. Take the break room for example. In my old job, there were two Microwaves that had maybe 10W each (ok a little more but that is what it seemed like) a couple vending machines, two fridges and a coffee maker with standard crap-o-mat coffee.
Now I have two coffee makers with ~20 different types of coffee and ~10 different types of tea. Three industrial Microwaves, Huge industrial fridges/freezers FREE SODA FOUNTAINS, A Pool Table, Foosball and TV.
Now I know it’s not about that room alone but seriously. What I am trying to get to is, that they appear to be valuing the individual. Thinking about the employee and not only about the customer.
Oh free-lunch Fridays don’t hurt either 
I almost promised myself I will wait out the format war between HD-DVD and Blue-Ray.
I did not.
As player prices keep falling – I decided to pick one up yesterday. $130 with 6 Movies (granted not great ones) for the XBox 360 HD-DVD Player.
I just looked at some Sales Ranks on Amazon.com and the Toshiba A2 is at ~298 while the similar priced Sony BDP-S300 is at ~1838. OK I admit I did not look through all of them and the fact the PS3 has Blue-Ray built in probably helps.
There is a reason to my madness in picking up HD-DVD over Blue-Ray. First off. I don’t like Sony. I don’t know why but I just don’t like them. For the same reason I don’t like Monopoly. Just can’t stand it.
Anyway – there are also technical reasons. I do think that HD-DVD is the better format. While players do improve and I may not have the specs on the very latest Sony Players Blue-Ray does not have to support the latest Audio Codec’s like DD-Plus, DTS Master Audio etc. like I said, some might support it but it’s not required.
As far as I know, most don’t have any Network Hardware e.g. they don’t support updated content via the Internet. Yesterday when i popped in the King Kong Movie that came with the player the first thing it did was go online and check for an update to that Movie (guess what there was one).
HD-DVD does support PIP (picture in picture) because they all have two video decoders.
In HD-DVD you can actually save information in the player itself. I.e. Bookmarks.
One of the main arguments of BD is that it can store more data. So what. It’s not only that, that matters. HD-DVD disks are close enough and obviously have enough storage for HD Movies and extra content.
As far as size goes, it is not really that important either from what I read. It appears that HD-DVD compression is more efficient that BD compression so they would not even need as much storage to store the same content.
At any rate. I have HD-DVD and if BD will win (Be it 5 years down the road) I will not loose any sleep over it. By that time, like some silly analysts say, we might ONLY have downloadable content anyway and Hard Media is a thing of the past.
Since it has been forever now that I wrote a blog post here I figured I push a proof of life
A lot has been going on lately so I have not had time for much photography. My parents were over, over Thanksgiving and we went on a short trip to Helen, GA. Took a couple shots but they are still on-camera so I hope I get them downloaded very soon.
Besides that, I am actually starting a new Job on Monday. I have been with my current employer for over six years and decided it is time for a change. My current role mainly involves support of our products in a technical capacity which is going to shift into a more internal support and monitoring position for a Data Center. I will give some updates once I started there.
