The Dean

When is the last time you heard someone say they were from "Downstate New York"? It is most definitely a NYC-centric thing. I'm amused when someone says something along the lines of "Brian, meet Dave, he's from Upstate New York, too." Of course, it turns out the guy is from somewhere like New Paltz, about 90 miles from NYC. But, to the person introducing us, we are both from the same area.

Wow. Anyway, if you ever happen to lose a program like PowerPoint (for example) there is often a free (open source) alternative that is very good. Open Office is a fully functioning office suite that is shockingly good. In fact, for those used to MS Office prior to 2007, it may be easier to make the transition to Open Office than it is to go to MS Office 2007. http://www.openoffice.org/ Some reviews: http://download.cnet.com/OpenOffice-org/30...4-10263109.html http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?...fice+3.1+review http://blogs.computerworld.com/review_of_f...icrosoft_office

The person who set up your drive must have been high, or something. I wonder why he/she decided to give you 3 small partitions and leave out 1/2 of the disk space? If that's the case, just take all the unallocated space and merge it into the C drive. Leave the D partition alone for now. That's what I would probably do, anyway.

Precisely. It doesn't "bother" me. That is, I don't get upset, or lose sleep over it. But I figure the person using it is likely ignorant, arrogant and/or stupid.

The problem isn't that is A descriptor, it is that is THE descriptor for anything outside the NYC area. Upstate New York is used as the default designation for Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Watertown, Jamestown, Elmira, Glens Falls, etc. Jamestown is "Upstate New York"? Really? How useful is that?

Congratulations, Your Majesty!

Why would it bother you if you live in NYC? It's just silly as a "general descriptor". Referring to what has to be about 90% or more of the state as "Upstate" is not only relatively useless, it is arrogant as well. At best it is just lazy. Can you imagine referring to the entire state of California north of San Diego as "Upstate" or "Northern California"? How about calling the entire state of Florida north of Miami "Upstate"? It is preposterous as it has almost no communicative value. It says almost nothing about where the area you are referring to actually is within the state.

Yes many of us are sensitive to this term, as it is nearly useless in indicating where a place is in New York State. As noted, it is a New York City-centric term, and only has value in indicating a place is outside the greater NYC area (and Long Island). I have this fight/conversation on a regular basis. Sometimes I get through, when the other person realizes "Upstate New York" has very limited communicative value. But just as often, the person is from the NYC area and only cares that Upstate isn't in that area. They don't care enough about where you are from...just that you aren't from NYC.

All that will tell you is what you have available to work with, should you use a program to repartition the hard drive. For example, here is a screen shot of my laptop's disk management page: http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5061/diskqw.jpg My laptop has one physical drive, but is divided into two partitions. This shows that my C drive/partition is 99 GB and my D partition is 11.75 GB. As you can see, I also have a small amount of space (1 GB) that is not assigned to any drive letter. In my computer the D drive is a recovery drive. That contains the original setup and is to be used if I have to reformat the drive and reinstall. In my case, I leave the D drive alone, for that purpose. We know you have at least three partitions, as you described in the 1st post. The only way you have a 160 GB drive is if you have a large amount of space that is not assigned to any drive letter. In Vista, you could actually repartition your drive from this console. Unfortunately, you can't do that in XP. The programs I recommended earlier are used for that purpose. You need to merge the C drive with one, or both, of your other partitions and any large unused space if it is available. As Doc notes, you may have to clear a little space on the C drive to simply get started. Moving or deleting pictures or music would help, A disk cleaning would help you get more space. (There are great free tools, like CCleaner for that, but you probably don't want to install more on the computer right now.) Reducing the System Restore usage will also help free up some space to make this a little more manageable. If you are concerned about losing data, you might simply try to merge the space the E drive is using (40 GB) into the C drive. You will end up with a 60 GB C drive and since there is nothing in the E drive you should have no problems. But I think the software is capable of merging drives without impacting data, so I would go ahead and make one C drive of the all the available space (merge the D and E drives). It might take a while to perform that merge, but not hours, I don't believe. Note: If your D drive is labeled as "Recovery" in Disk Management, leave it alone.

Great song that survives multiple remakes intact. How about this version: This George Harrison version is one of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7qpfGVUd8c

I saw this fish perform in the Catskills back in the 60's. It opened for this guy.

To check to see if there is space on your hard drive that is not assigned to a drive do the following. Control Panel Administrative Tools Computer Management Then click on Disk Management on the left hand side. It will show you the partitions, and any space that might not be assigned.

No, you shouldn't have to. If Gparted won't merge the partitions w/o destroying data, this program claims to do just that: http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Partition-...cdlPid=10982635 You really want C to be one drive. If it is really a 160 GB drive you have space that is unused. If it is all accounted for, you have a 90 GB drive, as /dev noted. And, if you really use your hard drive to store media, then I would invest in a larger drive as he recommends. But that's not your issue, right now. You have a big enough drive for what you currently have on your computer (even if it is only a 90 GB drive) if that drive wasn't divided into impossibly small partitions. You are only using 27 GB of that dive, according to your post.

One more thing. XP reserves 12% of the hard drive for System Restore by default. That's just stupid, IMO. System Restore needs a minimum of 200MB to operate, but should never have much over 1 GB, IMO. You can get some hard disk space by reducing the amount used for System Restore: http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/...1212478,00.html

If it is an XP machine I recommend increasing the RAM, but that's not the issue here, IMO. Your drive was stupidly configured. If it is a Vista machine, you have far too little RAM and it may be contributing to this problem (but your drive remains stupidly configured).

Are you using XP? If so... You can use something like Gparted to reconfigure your current partitions. Someone else may have a better program for you, but I think this works fine. Here's a guide: http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html Short of that, at least move as much as you can off the C drive and onto the D or E drives. That is, take all the music, pictures, documents, etc off of the C drive. I'm assuming all of your important operating system files are on the C drive. When it is that full it is very hard for the system to operate. If you get low memory messages after that (I assume it is a low virtual memory message), you can reconfigure your paging file. There is a lot of disagreement about what the best size for a paging file should be (or even if you should have one) but I use the following as a rule of thumb. Set the minimum to 1.5 times the size of your RAM. You can leave the max the same as the minimum or set the max to 3 times the RAM. Most of the above will work on Vista, too. But in Vista you should be able to repartition your drive w/o special software: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-...11-6170510.html

Terrific. Not rock, of course, but excellent musicianship. BTW, did you know Charo (the "cuchi-cuchi" girl) can play the guitar? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfVf7N8CJEA

Hand of Kindness is excellent, too. Very underrated musician, IMO. He really isn't known for blazing solos, for the most part, but he sure can play. Here he is having a little fun:

That is, without question, one of the creepiest things I have ever seen.

Not bad, actually.

When I think of that song, I think of the sax solo. But there is some decent wailing guitar there too, I think.

Everything worked as it should here.

WTF is the issue here? My initial Google searches revealed the same thing. Something that should be so simple ends up being a nightmare for some. That's the reason I came here instead of just relying on the info given on the softwares' sites. This shouldn't be so difficult, IMO. I will check it out. The problem is some of the software offers free versions that claim to be able to easily burn video DVD. When you get it, you find out you need the professional/paid for version. Some have free trial versions that claim to be fully functional, but are not. Why would someone pay for software from a company that has already lied to them? I don't think anyone should have an issue for paying a reasonable fee for decent software. But if they lied to you about their free version or free trial, why would I believe their claims about the software they want me to buy? She may have been a looker 20 or 30 years ago. Now she is a nice (married) lady that volunteers at a local theater (the theater is a client of mine).

Great call! Jeff Beck dedicated this song to Roy Buchanan on Blow By Blow. Buchanan is one of the greatest to ever strap on a guitar and one of the most underrated, to boot. Check this out. It gets pretty crazy starting at about 3:30: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDOIL5OqvYs Or there is this: But how did this thread get this far without a mention of Carlos Santana? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJX3uTA-X2A...feature=related