XP Memory Usage

While refreshing a Windows XP desktop, I noticed what would now be considered low memory usage. Compared to Vista desktops easily surpassing 1GB of memory usage, XP was using 81M while running IE. After patching, the XP memory usage increased to 107M.

USMint.gov Passwords

The US Mint website inexplicably disallows passwords that end with a number.

Windows Media Center Traps The Cursor

Running Windows Media Center (MCE) on Vista Premium with two monitors. When maximizing Media Center, the cursor would get trapped in the MCE window which made it impossible to work on the other monitor. Apparently this bug has been present since MSWindows XP, so it is a design feature.

MCEMultiMon (unzip it - no install program) provides a few commands to send MCE to different monitors and allows MCE to be maximized without trapping the cursor.

On this PC, the right monitor is #1 and the left monitor is #2. To make the program work properly, editing the configuration file to offset the window was necessary. The changes are in bold:
[Version]
Current=0.2
[Screen 1]
Enabled=1
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=0
Y Offset=0
[Screen 2]
Enabled=1
Width=1152
Height=864
X Offset=-1152
Y Offset=0
[Screen 3]
Enabled=0
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=2560
Y Offset=0
[Screen 4]
Enabled=0
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=3840
Y Offset=0
[Default Screen]
Current=2
[Startup]
Run with Windows=0

The next feature of MCE that would be useful to change is to make the application volume control work for the application, and not change the volume for everything. For example, muting MCE mutes everything and this is not desired.