NOISES FROM THE BASEMENT

1) Timely Tips - "Lost XP Password"
2) File Find! - "Offline CD Browser"
3) Sites-Seeing - "Toasters in the News\Go to Sleep"
4) Email Funny - "AlienSong"
5) They Said It - quotes to give one pause
6) Hodgepodge - that what fits no where else

Hi, folks! Welcome back to The Basement for another week of fun and frolic!

My customary special welcome to all new readers of Noises From The Basement; and a big thank-you to those who introduced your friends and relatives to NFTB last week--I've spent several evenings adding new folks that say they were referred by YOU!

Keep up the good work and pass this issue of Noises on - SOMEONE you know needs this information, right?!?

To all of you that wrote welcoming Noises back into your Inboxes, please accept my heartfelt thanks! While I'm still not quite sure how to answer when people ask why I write this silly rag, hearing that so many of you find value in spending a few minutes in The Basement is a big part of it!

All right, 'nuff of that. Let's get down to business...

Many of those with "welcome backs" also responded to my call for questions (I am answering that mail, too, so please be patient!) One such is Eric, who wrote: "Can you help me with a Office Prof problem/snafu? I would sure appreciate any effort. What I did is - on XP - forgot my administrator log on password, reading windows help is not helping, short of booting to safe mode reformatting disc, etc.. is there anything I can do? I hesitate to lose all my files if there is another solution. Apparently I can't even remove XP unless I am logged on as administrator. As you can my lack of knowledge and organization has has left me once again in a predicament. Thanks for any help."

My response, sad to say went something like this: "Not much I can do for you there... the fix is going be painful either way.

http://www.mirider.com/ntaccess.html has the only software I know of... It should recover the password - but you have to buy it at $70 or so to actually GET the password... go there and you'll see what I mean. Other than that, a reformat is probably what you'll end up doing... and THAT is certainly going to cost you in terms of headaches if nothing else!"

Little did I know that within 12 hours of responding to Eric, I would find myself in a similar situation! Next week - ARRGG!!! DO A BACKUP! DO IT NOW!

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2) File Find! - "Offline CD Browser"

It used to be, I had way too many programs and files on way too many diskettes.

How times change!

Today, through the modern miracle of super-fast high capacity storage, I have way too many programs and files on way too many CD-ROM's.

It's therefore even more important that I have available a reliable and easy-to-use method to track what's where. I've found this issue's File Find! fits the bill.

"Index and catalog your removable drives to get your files organized and categorized. By indexing your drives (or folders), you can locate files stored on CDs in just a couple of seconds, you can browse through the content of disconnected network drives or simply email an image of your hard drive to a friend. And all this without fees or ads disturbing you!" - Anders Petersson, program author

Offline CD Browser quickly catalogs your removable media (floppies, tape, CD's, Zip drive) and your permanent drives, too. Once you've set up your catalog, OCDB makes searching a snap! If you're used to the Windows Search/Find "feature" as your only method of tracking down M.I.A. files, then you owe yourself a test-drive of Offline CD Browser! You just might park a copy in your hard-driveway, too!

Download Offline CD Browser or visit the author's site here.  [2889 KB\EXE]

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Long-time readers know I have a soft spot for Internet toaster lore... my apologies :-)

"It's 3:00am. You're hungry . You've been up all night implementing a threads package for your Operating Systems course project. You stumble into the kitchen. Can you really be troubled with setting the toaster's heat setting, or activating the toaster's heating coils? Of course not! That's where the Talking Toaster comes in! Instead of fiddling with the toast-quality dial or hitting the down level, the toaster will actually ask you for the settings. Even better, you can simply respond by speaking your reply -- no buttons to push, dials to spin, or lights to watch."

Talking toasters. Those crazy college students--what will they think of next?

Here's what: College rivalries being what they are, another computerized toaster was soon conceived: "Robin Southgate, a final year Industrial Design student at Brunel University has designed a unit that grabs the weather forecast, and burns it onto a piece of bread"

"Go to sleep ya' little babe, go to sleep ya' little babe..." Need a cure for insomnia? Try this Shockwave Flash site from Belgium - simplicity itself! A starry night, sheep for counting, and a bluesy refrain makes a mesmerizing combination. Like it enough to take home? - you can download a free site screensaver, too!

Click here for Go2Sleep

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I recently received the following from reader Patti B.: "I am looking for the singing alien file that I am sure that got from your site. I hope you remember it, the one with the one-eyed alien?" 

Well Patti, you didn't get it here before, but I'm happy to make it available to you now! This 1999 classic is an early work of Victor Navone, who later went on to work on a little flick called "Monsters, Inc." [3051 Kb\MPEG, Zipped ]:

CLICK HERE to download a Basement Classic - "Alien Song"

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"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -  Rudyard Kipling

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< * > "Brilliant Digital Entertainment quietly installs its own software with every copy of the Kazaa file-swapping software. The Brilliant Digital software, which is being progressively distributed over the next few weeks, can later be remotely "turned on" to become part of a new network. Executives from Brilliant Digital and Kazaa's parent company say people can uninstall the Brilliant Digital or Altnet software from their computers without interfering with the Kazaa program itself. This is true, but it's not an easy process. These three steps will remove most traces of the Brilliant Digital software from most machines." < * > The Sheep Look Up: "A State University of New York at Buffalo professor, in a recent ecology journal, expressed confidence that eventually butterflies could be genetically altered to permit advertising logos and other designs on their wings." < * > Yum, yum! Charlton Heston had it wrong, it's not Soylent Green we should be worried about. NASA scientists have the "Food of the Future:Fish Flesh Grown Without Fish" < * > From Bonehead: "Reader Karl wants you to know that a software developer at Hotmail deserves an "unclear on the concept" bonehead award for truncating the subject line of one of our mailings because it was one character longer than the maximum for a subject line, but then replacing that single chopped off character with three periods." < * >

G'nite, and thanks for reading!

Dave Gretz

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 Dave Gretz,
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Sources & Resources
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Steve Gibson's
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Fred Langa's
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Declan McCullagh's
POLITECH

Roger D. Hodge's
HARPER'S WEEKLY

Barbara Mikkelson's
URBAN LEGENDS

Jerry Lerman's
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Chris Pirillo's
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