Category: My Computer

The good news is, my ThinkPad A31p didn’t burst into flames and destroy every copy of my data when we tried to migrate back over to it.

The bad news is, that’s about the extent of the good news.

Ghosted everything up, Ghosted everything down (to the older, larger HD), all went well — but the HD controller is different enough between the two ThinkPads that the image won’t complete a boot.

Rats.

So I have the tech looking at the whether he can get the correct driver file(s) onto the system (pulling the HD and putting it into another box), and, in the meantime, I have my temp computer still (needing some restores on it after stripping off the backed-up data files this morning).

Again, rats.

If this doesn’t work, then I’ll get instead a fresh baseline image, and I get to reinstall all my software and reconfigure (most of) it. Again. Not high on my list of things to do, though one of the dangers, of course, of heavily configuring your machine away from the baseline. Dagnabbit.

My ThinkPad A31 is back from IBM, at long last, supposedly with a new HD, a new motherboard, and no BSODs lurking under the hood.

Which means tonight I need to do a final home backup of files, and then in the morning trash most of My Documents (8Gb) and any unnecessary applications. And write down all the aps I’ve installed. Then when the techs get in at 7:30a, they’ll Ghost the existing HD image up, Ghost it back down to the (larger!!) HD on the A31, and WinXP will make everything automagically work.

Really. It says right here. On paper. Bill guarantees it.

My A31 has a slower processor, a scosh, than the T40 I’m using, and it’s a much heavier notebook. On the other hand, it has more RAM, almost twice the HD (which means I can reload my MP3s), a DVD/CD-RW, and a larger screen that permits resolutions over 1024×768, sing Hallelujah.

It’s worth the trade. If it works. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be a looooooong weekend.

“How to Bypass Most Firewall Restrictions and Access the Internet Privately,” a/k/a “The Surf At Work Page”

Just a bookmark for later research … purely for technical research, mind you.

(via GeekPress)

Now that I actually have it working, I’m happy with the 0.8 version of Tbird. My favoritest bit is that it allows all accounts to filter into the Local Folders, removing the redundant Inbox, Junk, Sent, Drafts, etc. folders for each account. I like it that Tbird allows you to separate accounts out. I also like that it now can mask the differences as far as the file display and distribution go. That, alone, is worth the price up upgrading.

It’s also nice that you can optionally block inline pictures in HTML messages (with an easy button to restore them).

I remain impressed by Tbird’s spam blocker, both in terms of what it catches, what it doesn’t catch, and how easy it is to add messages to the spam bucket. My only irk is that it doesn’t process new spam messages in a folder until you actually open that folder.

Anyway, I’m happy with it, and will be upgrading Margie (now that I know the secrets) anon.

I swear, doesn’t that sound like a super-hero team?

Anyway, there’s a new version of Thunderbird out there, 0.8. I’ll be installing it anon. More importantly, the Release Candidate for Firefox 1.0 is also online, waiting for download.

(For some odd reason I’m more inclined to hold off on the FF RC. It’s like, if 1.0 is that close, I might as well hold off and keep the 0.9.3 version. Which sounds goofy even writing it, so I may change my mind on that one.)

(via adot)

UPDATE: Important installation instructions contained in the comments.

The glitch between Adobe Reader 6.0 and Firefox is pretty well-known. Not only is Adobe Reader 6.0 a dog (on any platform), but in Firefox it can hang the browser when you try to exit the PDF file. Annoying.

One of the standard solutions is to upgrade to Adobe Reader 6.0.1. This seems to clear things up.

Problem is, I don’t use Adobe Reader. I have an actual copy of Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard (to write PDFs), and despite efforts to do the “upgrade my version” stuff in it, it didn’t want to advance beyond 6.0.

For the record, and in case anyone else is facing that particular dilemma, doing the Reader upgrade to 6.0.1 seems to work. You end up with multiple icons, but so far both the Reader and Acrobat seem to working find, and windows/tabs can be closed without hanging Firefox. Shiny!

I also downloaded a program called Adobe Reader Speed-Up (ARSU), which disables a whole slew of the Adobe plug-ins, which in turn speeds up the Reader’s load tremendously. (The newest version makes the plug-ins optionally loadable by PDF, so you’re not really crippling the program.) I recommend it.

So I have a Gmail (Google Mail) beta account.

Now what?

Actually, I’ve had it since right before the Comic-Con (thanks again, Fred), but only now went back to it. Problem, is, I’m not sure what I want to do with it.

I like having my own domain mail. I have no desire to get rid of that. Heck, I have no desire, when not at the office, to use a browser-based client rather than a local client program. There are times when I want to look at my mail when I’m offline, and with Gmail that isn’t possible.

On the other hand, the Gmail interface is a lot nicer than, say, Mail2web.

What would be keen would be a way in Gmail to pull all my messages in and use it as the reader of my POP account, but also use my PC-based client, too, as the “true” copy. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do that, though.

Harumph.

Just not sure what I’m going to do with the thing.

Buy more RAM.

Continue reading “Your Tech Tip for Today!”

Alas, as I had suspected, bugmenot.com is no more.

Bugmenot was an answer to web sites that require (snoopy) registration — name, e-mail, age, income, etc. Folks would register faux answers at bugmenot’s site, and then various applications (including Firefox by extension) could pull those answers down and fill the fields with little effort (and no value to the siteholders).

I’m mixed on the whole “free registration” thang. On the one hand, it’s a pain in the ass. On the other hand, if it helps someone pay the bills to provide me with their free information, is it so much to ask. And on the gripping hand, it’s so easily spoofed, it seems like it would be useless to the site owner.

And it is, as noted, a pain in the ass. So sometimes I would use bugmenot, and other times I wouldn’t.

And now I won’t any more, since bugmenot, at least, seems to be out of the battle. Suspicion is that Evil Lawyers are to blame …

I’m busy revising/moving/decommissioning various old web pages of mine (with an idea to moving it all underneath my wiki, for much easier revision), and ran across a listing of “web tools I use.”

Of the seven I was most enthused about in May 2002, only one — Google — is still on the list. Of the others, FrontPage has been dropped like a stone, SyncIt went under (and I’m having problems with the replacement clone, Sync2It), I moved away from Blogger eons ago, ditto for PopUpKiller (and now I just use the built-in Firefox stuff and Adblock extension), and I ran out of time to forward stuff on to SpamCop about two years ago.

And so it goes …

Your Quality Tip for Today: If you are using the “Track Changes” mechanism in Microsoft Word (which is a nice collaboration tool, to be sure), when you wrap up the work on that important and politically sensitive memo, and e-mail it off to various company managers and execs and officers …

… then be sure you’ve done an “Accept Changes” on the doc before you click “Send.” Especially if you’re then going out to lunch and will be unavailable for someone to call you up and let you know about the gaffe.

(No, it wasn’t me, but I was on the CC list — very low man on the totem pole, I assure you. And, no, no deleted things remained visible, but a number of other typo edits and text additions were still highlighted. Embarrassing.)

Micro$oft actually recognizes that everyone might not be rushing to install SP2 on their XP machines. So they’re offering this blocking tool.

While recognizing the security benefits of Windows XP SP2, some organizations have requested the ability to temporarily disable delivery of this update via Automatic Updates (AU) and Windows Update (WU). These organizations have populations of PCs, upon which they have enabled AU. This is done to ensure that these PCs receive all critical security updates. Since SP2 will start to be delivered to PCs running Windows XP or Windows XP with SP1 via AU starting on August 16, these customers would like to temporarily block the delivery of SP2 in order to provide additional time for validation and testing of the update.

Heh. Yeah. I can imagine a number of organizations wanting to test this kind of stuff.

Of course, it all goes away in four months. Which, of course, is not that bad an idea, from a security standpoint.

As long as it works.

If you are running Firefox and trying to run in only one window, you’ll find some applications still try to open up new pop-up-style windows (via Javacript, etc.). And sometimes that’s okay.

But if one of those menuless windows is in front, and you click on a link somewhere, another “tab” opens in that window, overlaying what was already there. And if you close the window, you lose the underlying tabs. And there’s no way to get back to what you had up already.

Unless you press Ctrl-W, which closes the current tab. Or Ctrl-Tab, which goes to the next tab. Huzzah (and RTFM, Dave)!

Alternately, for the non-keying types, you can install the CTC extension and add a “Close Tab” to the (right-click) context menu.

This note will save me a lot of time. I hope it does the same for you.

Siber Systems has updated AI RoboForm to work with Firefox 0.9.3. Huzzah. RoboForm (which I originally started using as a free add-on to SlimBrowser) is a fine password manager, a lot more flexible than the “remember this password?” bits in either IE or Firefox. Glad to see it working again.

(You can upgrade Firefox now, Doyce.)

(I need to add a new category — maybe “MyComputer”)

This morning, Firefox wouldn’t start up. Ran just fine last night. Everything closed down without a sweat. But this morning, nope. Process starts (shows up in Task Manager), but the browser never actually opens.

It will open in Safe Mode — which disables all extensions. Bleah.

Continue reading “Firefox glitch? Well, no, looks like PEBCAK”

Most Instant Messaging systems — and some e-mail clients (e.g., Thunderbird) automatically replace emoticon text, for example, smilies — 🙂 — with graphical images to “look better.”

Problem is, sometimes the replacements aren’t what the sender intended:

A colleague was discussing his 401(k) plan with his boss, who happens to be female, via instant messaging. He discovered, to his horror, that the boss’ instant-messaging client was rendering the “(k)” as a big pair of red smoochy lips.

I’ve had this happen in IM messages with Margie, when MSN interpreted a set of points I was making, which I labeled as (a) and (b), to be a little Angel and a Beer mug.

*sigh*