If you ever get a problem with Dell Open Manage failing to install because previous components are already installed AND you can’t remove the old components as the setup program will not initialize, take a look in the support\omclean directory and double click omclean. Click ok if it prompts you with the same errors that you got when you tried to uninstall from add/remove programs. You will be prompted to reboot at the end of the process. I’m not sure if clicking the ok button forces a reboot, but you can click the close button and the machine won’t reboot. At that point in time the offending software is no longer listed in add/remove programs. Arrange a reboot when convenient and install the new version of Open Manage, – 5.5 came out earlier this month. (omclean is also bundled in this download)
There are tons of reports on regenerating the offline address book and forcing outlook to download a new version once a change has been made, but that doesn’t really apply when outlook is not being used in cached mode.
I had renamed a couple of distribution lists but they were showing up as the old name in outlook for all my users. Turns out that I had renamed them on a server without the exchange add-ins which made it harder to troubleshoot as it all looked good on there! However, because of this I had not changed the Exchange General tab which includes the Display Name – sure enough this was showing the old name. I changed this and the users address book came up properly. Next time I’ll do ALL renames on my exchange server 😉
The Second Shot promotion is still running on Microsoft’s website, but now has an extra reward if you pass the exam on the first attempt. If you take a test before the end of the year and pass on the first attempt, you will now get a 25% discount on your next exam (if you take it by June 30th). Looks like it’s time to get the study books out again and push the guys at work to study too. So far for me the second shot promotion has just taken the pressure off of taking exams as I’ve passed each one, so this will be a nice reward. Thanks to Born to Learn for the heads up.
I upgraded my wrt54g to the latest dd-wrt firmware over the weekend from v23 to v24sp1. The annoying thing is that they highly recommend the unit is set to factory defaults which means re-entering the config in by hand after the upgrade. This is not a quick and easy task, especially whn you have to get the config off the there doesn’t seem to be a “print config” page. However, by using the screengrab firefox extension it didn’t take long to open up each dialog page, right click and choose screengrab, save, complete page. Saving all the screenshots into a unique folder means I have a nice copy of the config that I was then able to refer to when rebuilding the unit.
The new firmware also supports wpa2 so I enabled that on the router and then found that my xpsp2 box couldn’t see the router. I was pretty sure I had all the updates for xp on the laptop but I guess not. A quick download of the hotfix 893357, one reboot later and I was connected with wpa2. I’m sure we’re going to see more of this sort of thing on client laptops so this will also be a good placeholder for work.
I haven’t got the openvpn configuration sorted out, I think I have to set this up from scratch as I forgot to save one of the keys – but openvpn seems to be more integrated in this version – at least there are dialog boxes for openvpn – there didn’t use to be.
I’m sure you’ve all had the annoying experience when you are typing in a Word document or an outlook email and all of a sudden the screen is filled with backwards P’s – the paragraph marks. I’ve never been able to work out what triggers this to occur until today when I decided to find out after yet another helpdesk ticket came in asking how to turn this function off. (It is especially tricky in outlook as the button does not appear in the standard toolbars within outlook.)
I found that pressing ctrl, shift and 8 (or more correctly ctrl *) will toggle the paragraph mark status. I suspect that the keyboards are registering the ctrl key being held down at the same time as the shift 8 key is being pressed to get a * displayed in the text.
Note that you can find out what other shortcut keys take affect by right clicking an empty part of the toolbar, clicking customize, selecting the Options tab and then enabling “Show shortcut keys in Screen Tips” and then clicking ok to close the dialog boxes. Turning this on helped me determine the buttons to press.
FretsOnFire has been around for a while and allows you to play GuitarHero on your own machine, but JamLegend is an online version. Using the 1-5 buttons for the frets and enter to strum you can play like Guitar Hero.
There is some pretty good music on there from bands you will have never heard of – I didn’t see any music that I recognised, but I guess this will eventually come, but in the meantime this is a fun way of finding out new music. One of my favourite tracks so far is Go On by Blue Judy and the neat thing is they also provide links to other sites where you can get the music to download. In this case there is itunes, cdbaby, lastfm and others. The other good thing is they have good taste in tshirts – see the right most tshirt 😉
There are showdowns and Duels where you can compete against other people in realtime. It also has social features where you can add friends and you need an invite to play – I currently have three invites for (regular) blog readers if anyone wants it leave a comment.
One down side that is really annoying is that my flash player stutters – normally when I get to around 50 notes which means it breaks my streak and I have to start again. Seeing as though continual play is the best way of advancing through the ranks this is REALLY annoying. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with flash – I suspect it is as it also affects youtube and other flash video viewers 🙁
Just uploaded a new post to the Friends In Tech blog on how to quickly create JPEG files from Raw files – the free utility allows you to save space on your camera card and reduces the time taken to write the files too or just register to download IJFR
It’s that time of year again when we have to renew the tags on the car. As we’ve had a shuffle around of the cars and I now drive Kristen’s old car,I now have the chance to choose the number plate again. It is amazing how many techy/geeky options have already been taken. The funny thing is that entering reb00t as a number plate gives the error message “Your request has been found to be inappropriate, you have entered too many characters or your plate request has been found inappropriate due to its meaning.” I’m not sure what is inappropriate about reb00t (reboot was already taken).
Some of the suggestions that we came up with were bloggr (I can’t get blogg3r back as I guess it is still in the system from the old car even though I actually have the plates themselves already), iblog, googlr, ktxbai, igoogle, wonky, havepwd, r3boot, form4tc and hey up.
Can you think of any other good ones that aren’t already taken? You can check availability online at oplates.com
Retaggr is a new service that provides links to all of your profile pages on the various social websites, provides twitter updates and affiliation links all in one card. Mine is included below and will eventually get added to the side bar of the website (or added to the AboutMe section)
This functionality is great for gathering all the buttons together and keeping people up to date on your latest tweets etc. It’s also great for stalking someone or for doing research on a job applicant!
I did notice that the goodreads link was broken – shot off an email to them and less than 10 minutes later it was fixed – very impressive. I’ve added a request to have links to the geocaching website added too.
A while back I applied for a coupon that would give me $40 off a digital tv converter box as the US is switching off analogue broadcasts on 17th Feb 2009. This is similar to the switch off that is happening in the UK at the moment but seems to be a staged process as opposed to one definitive date.
Anyway, the coupon arrived and I finally got around to going shopping for one. The coupon is for $40 off selected (low end) converter boxes but you would be very lucky to get one for $40. Most of them seem to be $49 or $59.
I went to BestBuy this afternoon and got the Insignia NS-DXA1-APT. About 10 minutes after getting it home I had 11 REALLY clear tv channels. The difference between tv on the standard rabbit ears aerial and the aerial with the digital converter is amazing. The picture is now very similar to the quality of the picture you’d get with cable.
A lot of the channels are broadcast in wide screen though, and then some of the commercials are broadcast in 4:3 format so you end up with a small picture in the middle of the screen with black bars all around it – however pushing the zoom button on the remote brings it to full screen (but you will loose some of each side of the picture).
The remote also has the ability to turn off the tv if it is supported (there are about 45 different makes supported) and there is a auto shutoff option too.
One other feature is analogue passthrough – by turning off the unit, the tv will continue to receive the analogue broadcasts which could be useful if your stations are still broadcasting in analogue only.
There is also a basic EPG guide that shows you whats on now and next – better than nothing but nowhere near as sophisticated as the EPG you’d get with cable.
If you are still using over the air transmissions for your tv then I’d highly recommend you apply for a coupon and get a box now rather than wait until Feb and this unit is well recommended.