Bnpositive's Blog

Finally getting caught up on some past writing I’ve needed to do and this past is WAY overdue. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a brand new Chevy Traverse off the lot of Hare Chevrolet up in Noblesville.

I’ll be honest and up front, I wasn’t looking to buy a new Chevy car or anything. I’ve been enjoying driving my ‘96 Camry with 257,000 miles and still getting almost 30 mpg. The problem was, as soon as I stood next to and then sat in the car I was hooked.

The Chevy Traverse is a full-sized sport utility vehicle, but it feels like it has the interior room equal to that of our mini-van. There’s a 2nd row bench seat to help you fit seven people fairly comfortably.

With all the size available, the Traverse still drives and handles like a much smaller vehicle. It has all the comforts and amenities of a luxury car and my entire family was hooked after a single afternoon drive down to Brown County to visit friends. My daughter even said, “this is the best drive to Brown County EVER!”.

The Chevy Traverse also worked well as a stylish upgrade to the standard soccer baseball mom mini-van. Hauling players around as well as their equipment in the back hatch would be no struggle at all.

As much as my kids enjoyed their time in the backseat passing the time of the trip by with each mile on the road by watching a DVD in the entertainment system, it was my wife that had the hardest time letting me take the Traverse back to Hare Chevrolet dealership.

We’re still not “officially” in the market for a new car, but I can tell you this, when we are, I’ll be sure and visit Hare Chevrolet in Noblesville and see what they can do to convince me to buy a new Chevy car… it won’t take much.

Looks like this might have quite a few features and functionality I’ve been waiting to see in my installs. Given the number of websites I manage and host for friends, family and clients, this could be huge!

Here’s a little comedy to start your morning off right. I’ve been on a bit of a Brian Regan binge lately. This guy just cracks me up every single time.

As a follow-up to my previous post, Elephant Like Memory of Windows 7 Start Menu, about trying to get my computer to forget everything that was pinned to my Start Menu and let me start over; I’ve got an update. I was just messing around with my Start Menu again and accidentally opened the location of where all the shortcuts were stored for the Start Menu.

The shortcut are located in this directory path:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu

I’m not sure why I couldn’t find that before but I was able to find it this time and deleted all the shortcuts. In addition, I wanted to try and follow-up with some of the other websites I’d found earlier when troubleshooting my problem. I couldn’t find the exact ones I’d used previously, but these two websites provided the similar information I’d read earlier when trying to troubleshoot the issue.

• How to remove pinned icons from Start Menu in Windows 7
• ‘Pin to Start Menu’ appends “(2)” to shortcut in Windows 7

Hopefully this information will help someone else out in the future. Don’t let this little issue sour your opinion of Windows 7. There is a fix and the rest of my experience has been pretty much outstanding.

I’m really starting to like the Detroit Tigers more and more as I learn more about their players. The latest example of class and sportsmanship from their pitcher, Armando Galarraga and his “Perfect Game” and how he responded to not being officially awarded the game in the record books; that made me want to go out and buy a Galarraga jersey (until I saw it was going to be almost $200).

Here’s another video with some good examples of Tiger’s sportsmanship.

I’m absolutely loving my experience since installing Windows 7 Ultimate on the new laptop I just migrated over to from my 4-yr old laptop. I really should work on a series of posts that talk about my favorite features, but first I really want to figure out the answer to one little snag I’ve run into.

As you can see from the Snagit of my current Start Menu in Windows 7 Ultimate, I have a little issue with what appears to be multiple copies of the same shortcut in my list.

Somehow during the transition and migration of all of my files into my new system, Windows 7 Ultimate has remembered a previous setting of my Start Menu and WILL NOT forget it no matter how hard I try and what steps I take to try and refresh/remove the items.

I’ve edited the Windows 7 Ultimate registry multiple times using the regedit functions that store these values and nothing seems to work. My Start Menu can be completely empty, but as soon as I right-click on a shortcut and select “Pin to Start Menu” the shortcut name gets populated and written with the numeric identifier for there being multiple shortcuts to the same program that already exist.

If anyone can provide me some instructions that will completely wipe this memory and listing clean so that I can start again, that would be wonderful.

Until then, I’ll try and figure out another way to make this wonderful new elephant forget something and start fresh.

I’m not sure when I saw this or completed it for myself, but decided I’d share here with everyone if you were interested.

1. I’ve had three near death experiences
2. I like eating the tails of fried shrimp
3. I’ve biked down the coast of California and gotten college credit for it
4. I biked right past Michael Keaton as he was jogging in Malibu
5. I met my wife, moved, got engaged, married and made a honeymoon baby in 261 days
6. I have kept the ticket stub for every movie I have ever seen
7. I have never travelled outside of the United States
8. I have serious issues related to my children and them having loose teeth that need pulled
9. I was a radio DJ for a 50′s & 60′s music show when I was in high school
10. I represented the state of Kentucky in the Independence Day Parade in Washington, DC on July 4, 1992
11. I designed the county flag for the city I grew-up in
12. I’m not a big fan of dogs
13. I own 300+ gallons of aquariums that are not setup
14. I regret having not gone into the military
15. I’ve only been in 5 relationships prior to my marriage, all after high school
16. I once drove to Chicago from Nashville to meet a girl I met online; I ended up leaving in the middle of the night to drive back.
17. I have rejection letters from every NBA team in the league
18. I have always dreamed of being the next David Letterman
19. I was senior class president in high school
20. I have submitted applications to be on Survivor five times
21. I have never broken a bone in my body
22. I’m somewhat of a country boy at heart, but HATE country music
23. I did the sound effects on Carman’s “Mission 3:16” music video
24. During college I climbed a 300’ radio tower multiple times, with no safety equipment, once during a thunderstorm
25. In 2nd grade I barfed on my teacher

This is absolutely astonishing! The sides of the whole are so clean it looks more like a bullet hole into the earth or a laser from space! How’s that for a conspiracy theory?

Dot Shot: Sinkhole in Guatemala City – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com

Image: Gobierno de Guatemala on flickr