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Today is the day I have been waiting for for a few months now as Microsoft has released windows XP SP3.

You can get it now from Windows Update by clicking to this Microsoft Download Link

The latest service pack is really mostly a bunch of bug fixes all rolled up into one package but I have found on all of the PCs that I have installed it on that it seems to have sped them up, not a lot perhaps but still the operating system is a little faster. The other great thing about the new Windows XP Service Pack 3 is that now we can do installs of Windows XP a lot faster. The last few installs that I have done have taken about three hours because even with an install of Windows XP with Service pack 2 there are still about 92 updates as well as that huge Internet Explorer 7 change.

so I can rejoice to this Service Pack upgrade for Windows XP today but this will probably be that last one as Microsoft will now start pushing hard to get rid of Windows XP in favor of Windows Vista.

By the way There is still some life left for support of Windows XP support will go on for a few years yet. Mainstream regular support will go until April 14, 2009, after that date Windows XP will begin its “Extended Support” period that will last for 5 years until April 8, 2014.

I am home sick today and am really missing some of the nice things that I have at work, especially my dual monitors.

I work on a laptop so I have the laptop screen at home and at work and even though the resolution of 1280 x 800 is OK, with the extra monitor it is great. I know that there is always some resistance to getting people dual monitors but any Windows power user I believe has tyo really like the whole dual monitor setup.

Having things like copy and paste and drag and drop at your disposal is great on one monitor but is opened up to  a whole new level once you have that extra screen to place from and to.

I am not sure that I use my duals in the best way possible, actually I am sure I am not but there are a few good ways that I use my monitors

Having six or seven programs open all of the time I always use the laptop screen as my workspace and then have things like RDP sessions, or Firefox windows that I am using for supplemental info to drag onto my primary workspace.

Is this normal? Does anyone have better methods? I seem to never remember being taought how to best use dual monitors and instead just got excited to have them and started using or not using them effectively.

Today at home…I am missing that extra screen real estate.

Well I thought that Twitter was back yesterday and I guess I am getting updates from a few more people then I was before. Apparnetly there is an issue where Twitter is trying to resync two databases as some people are saying that his may take a week. I guess we will find out live when it is back up for real.

During this long outage Micheal Arrington at Tech Crunch has posted how important Twitter has become to him over the last couple of months.

Dave Winer is always spinning something interesting and he is suggesting today that everyone link Friend feed to Twitter and having tweets pushed out in RSS feeds instead of just going straight to the Twitter servers.

Twitter has been growing rapidly over the last few months but as we have seen in tech for a long time there is always some kind of kludge or hack that can fix problems in technology. I am not sure how popular Dave Winers fix will become but the whole idea of Microblogging is very disruptive and very exciting.

Maybe Twitter is just an evolution from IRC and ICQ and more popular messenger products over the last few years but the concept is here to stay.

I have been having trouble with Twitter all weekend. There was a server upgrade that they were doing at Twitter on friday night and since then I have only been getting updates from about three of the people that i am following.

I have never been more productive

Anyway, checking the support - help at Twitter it seems that lots of people are having exactly this problem and they are working to get it fixed. I am looking forward to it.

Hey if you want to follow me on Twitter I am at http://www.twitter.com/billnad

If you have not jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and are wondering why you would bother then I can explain a bit. It took me a year to figure out what Twitter really is supposed to be for. Basically you signup and get you twitter page. Now you can follow others and they can follow you. Find people with the same interests and then you can see the updates that they send to you and you can reply directly to them. Update what you are doing, ask questions, offer commentary. Twitter it like a big party where you are one of a bunch of people and no one owns any one conversation.

To make things easier using Twitter you can you a Firefox plugin called Twitterfox or just the Thwirl Windows desktop app for Twitter

Well Yahoo decided that once wasn’t enough and this morning they sent another press release out saying that they still don’t want to join Microsoft.

I would like to see how Microsoft could embrace and extend all of these cool Yahoo products so I am hoping that this deal gets done and done soon.

Apparently the quarterly results for Yahoo will come out on April 17th, Yahoo will get the deal done before then if the results are going to be bad and will stall some more if the results are great, rumor is that the results are bad.

I am so excited that Virgin and Google have announced that they are going to start colonizing Mars.

Although I am very excited to live on earth and have seen many places and had lots of plans here it would be wonderful to make a brand new start on a new planet.

I do have a few questions though:

1. what kind of temperatures should I expect in summer and winter? I am under the impression that winter is really cold on Mars and I suspect I will be OK since i live in Calgary already.

2. What are the schools like? I have two kids, one is 8 and the other is 4. They both need a school and I am not sure how good the schools on mars are like. Do the martians run them? Heck I guess we will be martians.

3. What is the state of TCP/IP going to neighboring planets. I heard an awful rumor that the latency would stop internet access as we know it on Mars and my son really likes to play video games.

4. What kind of electricity will I need. I know that all of my appliances and stuff are set for north american power but it would be really embarrassing to bring my big old 50 inch rear projection TV that weighs so much and then find out that the power doesn’t work.

5. On last thing. Is there good fresh fruit or am I going to have to grow my own garden. I am not much of a gardener or handyman and that would be a bit of a deal breaker.

Anyway. I am really excited and even though I didn’t sign up yet I am going to be talking to my wife tonight and giving notice at work tomorrow so I am really hoping that soon I can catch a flight.