Geekin'

I'm somewhat of a garden variety geek, and I like system monitors -- things that tell me what the system is doing. Doesn't even matter which system -- normally its the mainframe computer system that I work on, but PC level ones are cool, too. I delight in page after page of data, even as I am bewildered by page after page of data. I have this basic belief that this stuff is understandable; that the monitor will tell me what is happening, and that, if I pursue it long enough, I will understand it.

One excellent, and free, tool is Process Monitor, from a company called SysInternals, now part of Microsoft. This page describes it and other utilities. They install easily and are simple to use (though not, I admit, to understand.) Another is PSSHUTDOWN, which I used via a shortcut from the desktop to put this laptop into standby. It's a small thing that saves me the three-step standby process.

I think its useful and occasionally fascinating stuff.