After installing Vista I found that IE7 would not show Flash content.  Instead, the page I was trying to view would tell me that I needed to install the latest Flash Player (example sites: Google Finance & YouTube).  Clicking on the given link, I found myself at Adobe's site where I would successfully install the latest player.  After successfully installing, I would navigate back to the original page where that had Flash content but I would still see the error message stating that I did not have the latest Flash Player.  Even after rebooting, the error message would not go away nor would the page display the Flash content.

Googling for this problem at first turned up nothing.  People who complained about this were shot down by other users stating things such as "you need to enable Flash content" or "you need to enable javascript" as fixes, which I'm sure was followed by a big "DUH" and ignored from there on out.  Like myself, people having these problems checked all of these settings and indeed all were correct but embedded Flash content would still not play.  These statements usually fell on deaf ears.  That is until I ran across this post on Channel 9.   

The post claimed that to fix the problem all that was needed was to run the following:

C:\windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil9b.exe

Yes, this solved the problem but the poster (joem83) did not elaborate as to why this works but stated simply that "Flash for Vista is still in Beta".  So, if you are currently having Flash problems with IE7 on Vista, run FlashUtil9b.exe to correct the problem.  It works.

I forgot I did this a few months back.  I went to futureme.org and tested it out by sending me the following message that I just got today.

---

(The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Wednesday, September 20, 2006, and sent via FutureMe.org)

Dear FutureMe,

Hope you have a good birthday.

PastMe

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
delivery brought to you by FutureMe.org
like hearing from your past?
we like donations:  http://www.futureme.org/donations/
(your support helps keep FutureMe free)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - -

While looking into Microsoft's Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) I ran into an odd error installing the Guidance Automation Toolkit on Windows Vista.  The error in question was pretty generic but a quick search found a solution.  



Basically, the GuidanceAutomationToolkit.msi needed to be run as an administrator but you cannot right click an msi and simply select "Run as Administrator".  

The work around is simple:
Create a .cmd file
    install_Gat.cmd
Add a command to execute the .msi in question, and
    msiexec /i fully qualified path the the GuidanceAutomationToolkit.msi file
Run the command file as an administrator.
    save the file, then right click and select "Run as Administrator"

It's been a busy holiday season and my lovely wife has summed it up very nicely on her blog.  We're both looking ahead and see 2007 as being a very good year; we've dubbed it the "year of abundance". 

Found this on TechCrunch this morning.  Here are my results

SuperHero
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 90% Spider-Man 85% The Flash 80% Hulk 80% Robin 75% Catwoman 75% Superman 70% Supergirl 65% Batman 60% Iron Man 55% Wonder Woman 50%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Villain
You are The Joker

The Joker 74% Dr. Doom 72% Riddler 71% Apocalypse 70% Lex Luthor 69% Catwoman 65% Magneto 64% Green Goblin 58% Mr. Freeze 57% Venom 56% Dark Phoenix 55% Juggernaut 54% Mystique 50% Poison Ivy 45% Kingpin 45% Two-Face 30%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test