JK's Journal

Removing the junk from my new Dell PC

JK — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:47:56 +0000

So after 6 years I finally got a new desktop PC. Techbargains had a great deal on a new XPS 300; I can post more on those deets later. Needless to say I was a little excited to pick up my new machine today at FedEx.

I had a convo with @InstKamra at work today about removing the standard crap that comes with all new vendor systems. I usually embark on a painstaking process to meticulously uninstall, reboot, verify leftover files and registry entries, then install my preferred software. It’s a process I’ve done dozens if not 100+ times and it’s always worth it- Windows Add/Remove couldn’t uninstall white from rice. (*rimshot!*)

@InstKamra mentioned that Windows 7 was supposed to be better at managing these things, and I had some time to kill while I was setting everything up, so I used Revo Uninstaller and Google Docs to put together some numbers. In the end, according to Revo in Moderate mode, there were 1,048 files and 182 leftover registry entries from uninstalling 17 pieces of crapware. Follow the Google Docs link for a full table: Dell XPS 300 Leftover Junk.

I’ve also listed my go-to cadre of must have pieces of Windows FREEWARE, and I don’t say that lightly. I just might take these to my grave on a thumbdrive:

Avast Anti-virus
Revo Uninstaller
Chrome w/ Adblock Plus
Defraggler
Codestuff Starter
Sysinternals Desktops
Lastpass

Once I downloaded Defraggler I ran a quick Analyze and found the following horrendous state of hard drive fragmentation:

1,065 Fragmented Files across 9.6 GB
7,035 Total Fragments
27% Fragmentation
35.2GB hard drive space used

And this is a barebones system right now! Aggh! I can’t wait to dualboot with Ubuntu, but first I have to get Steam on here so I can play Skyrim in all its visual glory. Insert image of me as a kid in a candy shop here.

Veteran’s Day 2011

JK — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:25:24 +0000

A Good Friend and I went down to Arlington National Cemetery for the wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I’ve been in the DC area for nine years now and I’ve never been, probably for emotional buffer reasons.

The ceremony was as powerful as one can expect. We lucked out with a great spot in the crowd, and the Honor Band, Honor Guard, and Color Guard were pretty close to us. At some point all the phones in the crowd came out and we eventually figured out that the POTUS was just through the other side of the crowd.

I took photos, but due to gadget misplacement I only had my cell phone and not an actual camera. I’m still glad I got what I did though, and you can find them here: Veteran’s Day 2011. There’s also a few videos, but they’re crappy cellphone videos with constant wind noises that I probably won’t take the time to edit.

Late night software ramblings

JK — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 02:28:09 +0000

Lifehacker clued me into creepy tonight. I’m running Ubuntu 10.4 and couldn’t compile, so I booted into Windows and installed the win32 version. I’m simultaneously impressed and ‘creeped’ out, it works amazingly well, and I only trolled my twitter account.

I’m currently trying to creep famous world leaders. Oh, and today my doc nonchalantly checked her smartphone to see if my new antibiotics clashed with my current meds (answer: Nope!). I really really do love Living In The Future.

Update: Good results on Karl Rove and Ashton Kutcher- no, I’m not calling AK a famous world leader .

Karl Rove (full source: kml):

Ashton Kutcher (full source: kml):