Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

The Vista team at Microsoft have built a website called UltimatePC beta. Unfortunately its a flash site so while it looks sexy its hard to get around it and even harder to find the links leading out of it. So we have done that for you here.

They are promoting the New HP Blackbird Gaming PC as the ultimate PC. I had a rig like this 2 years ago and my current rig is almost exactly the same. I think of it now as pretty ordinary and am waiting for the next step up in system performance, but I suppose for most people its pretty good - and dang expensive. Basic specs, Quad core extreme CPU, 2 GB RAM (not enough!), 2 8800GTX video cards, Raptor hard drive, sexy case with some excellent thermal cooling solutions and Vista ultimate. starts from around USD$5K, though with the USD fallen in a hole lately that's good for the rest of the world.

I am really enjoying coaching the kids. I have been coaching them now since February this year. We had been playing together on and off since December, and they asked me to be their coach.

It has been great researching the coaching skills for the drills and the skills I have been using for 20 years, and even more fun putting it together in a package for these kids.

I have between 10 and 15 kids turn up once a week for a full training session in a gym, and 5-6 of them come running with me on Monday night and then to a local half court for skills drills and some 3 on 3.

The really exhilarating thing is seeing them start to pick up skills. They are all nearly shooting correctly now (when none of them did before) and they can all attempt a layup with most of them making it around 30% of the time. Their field shooting is increasing slightly, to close to 20%. I want to get it closer to 40% if I can.

I did a really dumb thing.

Yesterday my backup failed, because of a device I/O error. I assumed (really badly) that the error was on the backup drive, and so proceeded to reformat it - losing all my backups in the process. My logic was that after I had reformated it I would try and run a fresh backup and if it failed again I would replace the disk.
It failed again, but this time I realised it was not the backup drive that was at fault, but one of the drives it was trying to backup.
I realised this because it was the drive that had all our music on it, and I was having trouble playing music, followed by even more trouble browsing the drive.
I should have been a bit smarter. This was the last of three disks that I bought all in one go from one shipment, same size and model, all 500GB Western Digital drives (I know, I know - WD are crap). The other two had failed within the last 3 months and been replaced. I just hadn't gotten around to transferring the data off this disk.

A blog hero contest has been announced on the BlogHer website.

Here's how AnITGirl announces it:

Announcing the “Who’s Your BlogHer Hero?” contest.  In a nutshell, here’s how this is going to go down…I quote from the official rules when I say that we’re looking for “a blogger that has made an impact in the life of women and how that blog inspires passion, innovation and ability to inspire a community.”  Said blogger can be male or female, btw.  The nominator will send in a 100 word essay on why this person is worthy of being the BlogHer hero, and a team of judges will pick one blogger to award an awesome prize to.  The prize in question is a trip for 2 to BlogHer in San Francisco this summer.

Check all the rules on the blog her site and then nominate yourself or someone you know.