The US has a new president. Many people say “about time”. It definitely is the end of one era and beginning of a next one.

I thought it would be a fitting end to the Bush era to read Scott McClellan’s “What Happened” (Wikipedia, Amazon, publisher). I had it for a while now and started a while ago, and intended to finish it before last November’s election. Which became this January’s inauguration. But hey, I’m done with it now.

I was interested in this book for many reasons. First, a lot of my past and maybe future work revolves around communications, and it’s interesting to read the work of someone who has done it at the highest governmental level possible in the modern world. Also, this book discusses the dynamics behind many political decisions and the way they shaped one another and were communicated, from the author’s perspective. Politics is a dynamic that is always present in governments, companies, and just about any human organization. It’s not a substitute for getting real work done, but it may helpful to understand how politics happens — especially given that the book claims that it was the era of “permanent campaign” during both Clinton and Bush, and campaigning often WAS the substitute for providing real value to people.

McClellan says that the intentions of Bush were noble and he did not knowingly deceive or betray the world, but he just had a distorted perspective on things and was not able to listen or take advice when he should have done so. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

The book is mostly about how Iraq war started and was communicated, and how the Plame affair was related to the grand scheme of things. McClellan talks about the affair because senior Bush officials (Rove and Libby) knowingly told him false information and made him unknowingly lie to the press. Sad. And telling about the ethics of the administration.

It’s also interesting how the administration commented on the book after it came out. They didn’t try to dispute any facts; instead, they said about the author:

“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.”

Argumentum ad hominem, anybody?

I don’t have full confidence that in the US there won’t be more of the “same old”. The new administration deserves the benefit of doubt, and the new president is a good public speaker. Whether they get things done, and what things, is too early to tell. I hope the current administrators and press secretaries won’t have to write similar damning books.

Watched two movies over the weekend.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe. I was a huge X-Files fan when I was in high school. So this was a nice trip back to childhood. In Wikipedia or IMDB, Gillian Anderson said how it was hard for her to get back in the role after all these years. And it showed, I don’t think she played very well. But overall the movies was really great and I would say “in style” for X-Files. Except for Mulder and Scully going on a vacation together in the end — what the hell was that?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This would have been great to watch a) with my kids or b) if I still was a kid myself. I really liked the games in the series, and earlier movies too. But out of these two, I liked X-Files more.

Sometimes I get e-mails that are simply too good to be made up. This is for real.

Subj: Skype question regarding the symbols
The picture used for not available, it is driving me crazy, is it a banana or a moon? A co worker and i are having a dispute over this. thank you. An answer would be much appreciated, even if its real quick.

I am pretty sure it’s a moon. Although, now that I look at it, it does look a bit like a banana, doesn’t it?

Whoah… no posts for a whole month, and thus the new year starts with more tech whining. Happy new year.

I’ve been using Parallels as my virtualization platform (running Windows XP on top of Mac). So far it has worked quite well for me, but after I upgraded from Parallels 3 to 4, I am not so happy any more. The upgrade itself worked and my virtual machine runs, but it does not see ANY CD/DVD drives or images — neither my actual hardware drive nor any images that I connect to it. This sucks big time. And it was working fine in the previous version.

Here’s what the Windows device manager shows for my two mounted DVD drives (one is an ISO image, the other is actual hardware). Updating the drivers does not do anything.

I have paid them money and this is a genuine product. I have contacted their support twice to ask about it, and have gotten completely useless answers in both cases. So this remains unsolved for now.

I am thinking of forgetting all about Parallels and switching to VMware at this point, but who knows what quirks it has. Plus the joy of paying another $80… Argh.

UPDATE: See the very helpful comment from Leto below. I was able to get my CD/DVD working, yay! Works again with both the real drive as well as virtual images. Here’s what I did:

1. Followed Leto’s instruction, deleted secondary IDE channel and both CD-ROM devices. Rebooted. Did not help. But maybe it had something to do with the fix still.
2. Went to the Microsoft KB article where they describe how to remove UpperFilter and LowerFilter registry keys from your device. Rebooted. This seems to have done the trick, my drive now works again. Thanks Leto.

One is only left to wonder, how come I get better quality support when complaining on a blog, versus going to them through regular support channels.