Went out yesterday to get some spider webs off my front door and saw possibly the hugest ant infestation ever. All the way around the house, up and around my front door, then down the front stairs. Tiny little black ones (so small you can see through ‘em).

Out came the Raid and washed the bad ants out.

I swept up the ant bodies and got a pile about six inches in diameter and maybe half an inch tall. Yes, that many ants. I probably should have taken a picture, but I was pretty grossed out.

Turns out they were coming from this hole near the side of the house. Flooded that with Raid and I haven’t seen anything emerging from the hole since. Here’s hoping I got ‘em.

It seems that every computer I work on has this issue, and I always forget how to fix it and have to go searching again… so as much for me as for you:

At boot time, I get an error in my System event log:

The PMEM service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

The answer I found over at Annoyances.org works:

1. Run regedit
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PMEM\ and find the ImagePath key
3. The value will be something like \??\\C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PMEMNT.SYS - change it to a valid version of that path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PMEMNT.SYS
4. Do net start pmem at a command prompt to get the service running.

If you don’t have PMEMNT.SYS on your machine, you can just disable the service instead:

1. Run regedit
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PMEM\ and find the Start key
3. Change the value to 4 to disable the service.
4. Next time you restart your computer, the service won’t start up so it won’t check for the PMEMNT.SYS file.

If you were ever a fan of the early-90’s era techno band The Real McCoy, O-Jay (the rap artist from the band) has a blog going where he tells the story of the rise and fall of the band.

Actually it’s interesting for fans and non-fans alike; a view into the music industry from an insider’s perspective.

While you’re waiting for the Scooba, check out the Roomba Scheduler: It allows you to program your Roomba to automatically run at scheduled times.

Of course, if you already have a Roomba, you can just add on the scheduling capability.

Sarah Michelle Gellar is going to play Alice in Wonderland (in the movie adaptation of American McGee’s Alice, a darker take on the original Lewis Carroll story).