Deleting the “Program Files” directory

No, don’t worry I’m not that crazy. On the HTPC, I initially installed Vista on the 1Tb disk. When the replacement system drive arrived, I then installed Vista on that drive, but didn’t reformat the original disk as I’d already recorded some programmes that I wanted to keep.

This meant that there was the old “Program Files”, “Windows” and other directories that Windows creates. The problem is that even running with UAC you can’t delete them. If I’d reformatted the drive, I would have never had this problem.

Tim Sneath went through a similar situation, and his solution worked for me too.

A new toy

When I left UniSA earlier in the year, one of the parting gifts I received was a gift voucher, and I’ve finally decided what to do with it. I bought an iPod Shuffle.

I’d been pining the loss of my trusty HTC TyTN II phone, which doubled as an MP3 player, but couldn’t justify the price to keep it. I decided all I wanted was a basic player – nothing too fancy, and the Shuffle seemed to fit the bill, whilst still having the slick Apple look. As long as I could listen to a few podcasts I’d be happy (.NET Rocks! and Hanselminutes for starters)

I priced the 1Gb Shuffle in some local stores at $AU64. Apple sell it online for $AU65, plus they let you engrave it with custom text. I liked that idea, so if you ever come across a Shuffle that looks like the one above, it’s probably mine and could I have it back :-)

It’s not the first purchase I’ve made from Apple - that would be a Newton MessagePad 2000 I bought many years ago (and many years ahead of its time), but I think this is just as nifty.

You might also notice it is red – that’s because part proceeds of (PRODUCT)RED™ iPods are donated to fight AIDS in Africa.

Cutting remarks

When I’m not cutting code, I cut trees :-)

It was a fine day on Saturday, so I hired a chainsaw finished up the job that a big storm started last year.

Two-thirds of our Manchurian pear tree was blown over (conveniently missing the roses and the other tree you can see on the left). At the time, a friend Craig (also a code-cutter by the way) came over to help clean up the mess. We left all the branches in a big pile, and that, along with the remaining trunk was chopped up on the weekend.

And it is true to paraphrase the old saying - when you have a chainsaw, everything looks like potential firewood.

Sunday was Father’s day, and rather than breakfast in bed, the kids decided not to wake us up early for a change – much appreciated – especially as I was feeling a bit sore from lugging the chainsaw around the day before (keyboard work doesn’t seem to give you as big arm muscles as you might think!).