Happy Birthday Keri!
(sorry i missed your shindig on friday)

Thanks AL

And a big thank you to Paras and Andy.... Thank you for the gift... although Matt thinks it's funny that I can't seem to get the kazoo to work... he says it's my failure as a musician. Though he seems to like to rub it in that he can get it to work.

How did you know i wanted a new puzzle?

Happy Birthday Keri!

Further to that last post, and because I'm working on a library research assignment that involves finding strange studies, I found a randomized controlled trial about video games and laparoscopic surgery. Strangely enough, it was in The Journal of Endourology. I'd link to it, but I went to it through the UofA library proxy, and I doubt it would directly link for anyone else (besides, I'm not sure anyone would want to read the whole thing.) Here's the punchline:

Conclusion: Video game aptitude appears to predict the level of laparoscopic skill in the novice surgeon. In this study, practicing video games did not improve one's laparoscopic skill significantly, but a larger study with more practice time could prove games to be helpful.

-- Rosenberg et al. Can video games be used to predict or improve laparoscopic skills? Journal of endourology [0892-7790] yr:2005 vol:19 iss:3 pg:372-376

I was telling Andy about this already, but a study has found that laparoscopic ("keyhole") surgeons who play video games are over 30 percent better (ie. finished a standardized laparoscopic training exercise faster and with fewer errors) than those who did not play video games.

Hooray for studies that justify my wasted time!

Ah, good ol' aLp:

K9 is back!

And Happy Birthday, Keri.

Here Andy, tutorials galore.

You can force/doublecheck the boot mode (ie normal or safemode) by tapping F8 when the computer starts up and selecting whichever mode you want

The website Al linked to pretty much explains it with the picture, when you're in safemode at the top of the screen it will say windows xp build "x", with the words safemode in all the corners