I’ve had the dreaded Windows Vista for exactly a year now and I just had my first real “issue” with the OS. It was the dreaded Windows Vista “USB Device Not Recognized” error that seemed to appear after a quick power blip in my home.
For those of you not familiar with the famous Windows Vista USB Device Not Recognized error, I’ll give you a quick synopsis: you are using Windows Vista and minding your own business when suddenly a little pop-up message appears and tell you, surprise! you have a “USB Device Not Recognized!” There’s an annoying little bell that rings and you click on the stupid pop-up bubble and get.. well… nothing.
At least for me I saw nothing. And here’s the problem: you can’t find anything wrong so you can’t actually fix anything. Windows Vista doesn’t tell you which USB device is not recognized, which USB port has the problem or what it thinks is happening. The error message “USB Device Not Recognized” is just about completely meaningless. But every 30 seconds the bubble pops up again with that annoying little bell.
So I did what I do whenever I hear a discouraging sound coming from my car engine: I turned up the volume on my iTunes and promptly forgot about the message. Eventually I got smart and just turned the Windows Alert sound off.
After a few days the error was still popping up and though I couldn’t hear the bell, the bubble was troubling me. Other people have spent hours searching through documentation and reloading Windows Vista from scratch and downloading USB drivers. I am far too lazy to do that anymore, so I just went searching on the internet for the stupidest most implausibly easy solution I could find.
And it worked.
The solution is simple:
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1. Unplug (not just turn off) you PC.
2. Unplug all your USB devices from your PC (and, heck, any power supplies as well)
3. Wait 30 minutes or more.
4. Plug in your essential USB devices (keyboard, mouse).
5. Plug in your PC, turn it on.
6. Pop in the rest of your USB devices.
Ta-da, your Windows Vista USB Device Not Recognized Error is solved. This worked for me. I actually did it once without unplugging the USB devices and the problem went away for about three days and then appeared again. I did it again, taking out all my USB devices and I’ve been going for a couple weeks now with no problem.
I thought about trying to sell some sort of wacky device that would help you pull the plug out of your computer, much like my iPad invention for fixing that dreaded sad iPod icon. But then I realized: I’m too lazy for that, too.
Instead you can just thank me with large unmarked bills.
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My wife and I like to watch the HGTV show called House Hunters which is a pseudo reality show that follows someone as he or she looks at three homes and ultimately buys one. It’s one of those shows you never actively sit down to watch, but rather you find yourself watching when nothing else is on.
Ding dong, dammit, DING DONG!
The formulaic House Hunters first introduces us to the people who are looking to buy a house for the usual reasons: sick of renting, have a growing family, moving to another city, clearly got some sort of inheritance and want to blow it. Then the show follows the prospetive buyer while he, she or it walks through three different homes with a real estate agent during which they all amuse themselves by making somewhat scripted comments about the home. At the end of the show the buy picks on of the three homes and we get to see the person a few months after he or she has moved in. The show is hosted by Suzanne Whang, who is supposedly a fairly talented comedian and actress, though you couldn’t tell by the crappy lines the writers force her to choke out, “Will Rod and Randy be able to find a home that meets their needs…and the needs of their dogs Trixie and Mixie?”
Ding dong, dammit, DING DONG!
House Hunters is basically a heavily edited and poorly scripted reality show with a tiny bit of voyeurism thrown in as we are shown the inside of homes we’d never normally get to see inside of. It’s paced slowly and the comments are fairly predictable, which makes it a show that simply begs the viewer to perform his or her own Mystery Science Theater 3000 all over it. Which, from what I can tell, most viewers do.
Did I mention that this is one of the more popular shows on HGTV?
If you watch this show long enough you become amazingly acute to the House Hunters formula and it begins to rot at your brain. You begin to actually say the lines before the buyers or even Suzanne Whang can spit them out. The only thing that can counter brain rot, of course, is alcohol. So here, without further ado, is the House Hunters Drinking Game:
The rules are simple. Sit down on the couch with copious amounts of your drink of choice and turn to HGTV as House Hunters begins. Drink responsibly and I’m not liable for anything There, I said it. Here’s what you do:
Take a drink whenever you hear the House Hunters doorbell. Take two drinks if it rings in a House Hunters commercial that is running during the House Hunters show.
Take a drink if Suzanne Whang is shown walking along a hedge or through a park that is clearly a thousand miles away from where the featured homes.
Take a drink if the buyers are white and have more than three kids, someone is pregnant or there are two men or two women who buying a home together without any explanation of their relationship. Take two drinks if the buyer is gay and pregnant.
Take a drink whenever someone acts as though they don’t want to buy a home because of the paint color or light fixtures currently in the home.
Take a drink whenever someone makes a comment about a closet being big enough for her clothes and then wonders aloud, “Where will you put YOUR clothes?”
Take a drink whenever someone asks about how many bathrooms are in the home and then acts shocked as though they’ve never been told anything about the house before seeing it.
Take a drink whenever the Realtor puts a positive spin on a serious home flaw like no running water. “No need to worry about plumbing repair!”
Take a drink whenever the three homes shown have a price difference of over $100,000.
Take a drink if you guess the house the person buys before the big “reveal” at the end.
Take a drink when the buyers have basically gutted the house and rebuilt it from the inside out six months after moving in.
Take a drink when the closing scene begins with a close up of someone cutting up food and then zooms out to see the happy couple in their new kitchen.
Take a drink whenever there’s a new baby in the family. Take two drinks when the couple with the new baby is gay.
By the end of the 30 minute show you should be thoroughly enjoying the house hunting process, puking your guts out, or looking for a new home yourself.
Like most television drinking game, this one has several versions. While writing this post I stumbled across another House Hunters drinking game, this one was written about a year ago by SpaceGirl. I don’t know anything about her, but she seems to have a pretty stylin blog and a lot of cool interests. I have neither. I thoroughly suggest combining the rules of both games if you want to go blind and die of liver damage within the week.
And, remember: this is just a television show. You should never, ever, under any circumstances look for or buy a home yourself while under the influence of alcohol.
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