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April 29, 2005

Dear Outlook Team,

U R Soooo dumb.

Love,

--Mike

So. I'm making NEW rules (i.e. DUMBING down my inbox) to account for the stupid 32k rule.

To be honest, it's not been that bad of an exercise. Only, I noticed that some of my messages were satisfying multiple rules. No biggie. That's MY Fault, and is easy to fix -- just tell the rules that after the first rule (in order) finds a match, stop processing.

Remember, ALL of my rules are client side. All of them. Everyone of them.

When I got done telling a bunch of rules to stop processing, and hit the big OK button, I got a warning: "Oh noooo! This will confuse the SERVER (the server will see this instruction, and stop processing other server side rules). Are you sure you want to proceed"

Uhhhhhh. Yeah. I think it'll be safe. Thanks for the ... warning.

Posted on April 29, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

XP Annoyance: Changes to the Start Menu and Task Bar

When you have a fresh, new, install of Windows XP, making changes to the Task Bar and Start Menu apply instantly.

After you've installed some software, and had the image going for just a few weeks, making changes is still just as easy. But when you hit OK, the process just sits there... doing nothing.... for 20 seconds. No CPU spike. No drive activity. Just Windows sitting there... thinking ... (churning through the registry, who knows)

Posted on April 29, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 28, 2005

Outlook and Exchange Teams need to be FLOGGED. Publically.

I'm sorry. I just can't believe this one. I LIVE on Outlook. 95% of the time that my machine is on, Outlook is running. And I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with what a miserable, sodding, piece of crap it is.

I'm running Outlook 2003. I've been just connecting to POP3 accounts. But with my new work, I'm actually connecting to an Exchange Server too (via secured HTTP). Frankly, that's pretty cool if you ask me.

Only I've run into a major problem that just BOGGLES my mind. I use rules extensively. They help me sort the few hundred pieces of email I get a day. You might say, I NEED them.

Guess what happens when you start connecting to an Exchange Server Your rules get synchronized with the server. Okay, fine. No biggie, right WRONG. You see I've got a PIDDLY 25 rules. Only the 25th won't work/go into effect. Why because there's not enough room on the server to STORE 'All' of my rules. Exchange limits your rules to 32k. By design. I think that's pretty WOW in a day of GB files, but I _can_ understand that keeping the size small helps the server scale, etc. Future versions are supposed to be able to allow for bigger rule sets.

Why am I so bent out of shape then Simple. I don't GIVE A CRAP about Server-Side Rules. NONE of my piddly 25 rules are server side. I don't WANT the sorting/stuffing/deleting/etc done on the server.  EVERY ONE OF MY RULES ARE CLIENT SIDE. Only, Exchange feels the need to store CLIENT SIDE RULES on the SERVER.

Yes, all of my client side rules are marked (client only). So, someone explain why the server is storing my client-side only rules (Hence, my petition to FLOGG the Outlook/Exchange teams).

Posted on April 28, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 27, 2005

Life as a Geek is Hard

So, I'm working from home (more on this later, hopefully), which means I was down to one monitor (my laptop). I've got a gargantuan screen (1920x1200), but still needed some more real estate for a project I was working on. So I grabbed an old, nasty, CRT temporarily laying around the house.

Only, this monitor (in addition to having major issues with its trapezoid and pincussion) occasionally pops and cracks. That's where life as a geek gets hard. The other day, it started poping and cracking. My first thought was: "This thing is going to explode." As I thought about that, I thought about all sorts of glass and parts in my arm and torso -- the monitor is pointing right at me. Then, of course, I remembered that I've never HEARD of anyone being fragged by a CRT, so I was probably safe (I almost googled it as the monitor was cracking and popping so hard.)

Then I had another idea: the CRT wasn't pointing JUST at me. It was pointing in the rough vicinity of my new laptop too. This time I really was worried about it exploding. So, I pointed it a little bit more AT ME, and away from the laptop, then I went back to work...

Posted on April 27, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

April 26, 2005

Idiot

Flame away, but I say the guy is a MORON. Well, I guess he's obviously not a moron, but he is a BIG CRYBABY.

Posted on April 26, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Longhorn brings along Hybrid HardDrives

I've been keeping an eye on Solid State HardDrives for some time now. But since they cost about as much as a car (or house), I've not been overly expectant of them to arrive in the mass market.

But good news, it looks like Microsoft and Samsung have teamed up to create what they're calling a hybrid drive, that uses flash memory as a buffer to the HD. I'm thinking that Samsung has done all the work -- to the point where all of this fancy performance enhancing stuff is abstracted away into the HD itself (so that you wouldn't need a special bus to take advantage of it). But the fact that MS is pushing this technology means that it should finally find wide adoption. The hope then is that people get sick of just having 1GB 'caches' and start working up to 3-5GB caches where they work from, and then just store their GBs of data on a spinning drive.

Computers are finally about to get fast.

Posted on April 26, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 18, 2005

Windows Firewall -- it doesn't have your back

So, this would normally be the BIG news of the day. But given the horror I'm still recovering from (see the previous post), it's basically back-burner news in my world.

But it's still newsworthy.

A few days ago I got rid of my normal firewall -- it was hosing development on my localhost (completely seizing up the box). Zone Alarm pwns, but I just couldn't hack it messing up my dev environment, so I uninstalled it.

I was GOING to put some other firewall product on my box (tinyfirewall, or kerio), but never got around to it.

I figured that the NEW and IMPROVED SP2 Windows Firewall had my back. Boy was I wrong

Today, I played HL2: Deathmatch. An online game. I played it for an HOUR, sending Ooooodles of packets back and forth... probably a few MegaBytes of data. The game had FREE reign on my computer. (I trust HL2, but want you to get the idea... this game could have been ANYTHING (like spyware), and could have done ANYTHING.)

When I got done playing I was greeted by the following 'SECURITY ALERT.'

Um... one hour, of unrestricted access between my box and the internet NICE.

They should add a 4th button/option: Go back to SLEEP.

Posted on April 18, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

How NOT to impress your new Employer

Here's my recipe for disaster:

INGREDIENTS:
1. New Employer (it helps if you REALLY want to impress them).
2. New CellPhone and Headset.
3. Calling 'Conference Room'.
4. One idiot. (This would be me, your mileage may vary.)

HOW TO PROCEED:
1. Call the telephone conference room to talk to your boss. The 'teleconference room' is a phone number that you dial, then enter your pin into. The 'room' just sits there, and anyone in it can talk with the other people 'in the room.'
2. Talk for just a few minutes.
3. THINK that you've hung up, then proceed with your life. This is where the real fun begins. In my case, a few minutes after I THOUGHT that I hung up, I got on skype with my best bud Carson, and we got ready to play Half-Life2: Deathmatch. Since it was Skype, I had to put my headphones on, so that Carson would just hear my voice, instead of all the noise coming out of my computer. Since it was the first time Carson and I had played HL2: Deathmatch, there was lots of mumbling about which servers to find, how lame this or that was, where the heck this was, etc.
Between the two of us, it PROBABLY sounded like a conversation. To my desk, where my cell-phone headset was laying (decietfully)... it probably sounded like incoherent mumbling/shouting.
Then the game began. I can only imagine: "Ha! take that fag!" and "dude, you totally blew me up!", cackling, complaining about my mouse hosing me, etc. for an HOUR. All while your cell phone is turned on and you're plugged in to your company's 'conference room.'

Oh yeah. Then when you're done playing games, eat some doritoes, and work for about another hour and a half, before your cell phone battery finally DIES and saves you any more possible shame.

Pretty AWESOME if you ask me.

NOT!!!!(it actually sux0rz so bad I can barely think about it without getting sick.)

Posted on April 18, 2005 | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 14, 2005

Yeayy... ReverseDOS

Well, almost Yeay!

It's close. I've got most of the online documentation done. And the code itself is done/feature complete. I just need to do some serious testing of it, make a few more tweaks, and then I'll push it live.

What the hell am I talking about ReverseDOS, a spiffy new tool. Go read about it.

It's not official yet... but it's late-ish at night and I couldn't wait to put something out on it -- mostly because it will force me to finish it up shortly.

(I can't wait to sick it on the referrer spammers hitting this site... )

Oh, and when it DOES go live (some time next week), I'm going to release it as version 1.0. I'm tired of all this perpetual beta stuff that I, and others, have going on.

Posted on April 14, 2005 | | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)