Seems that Microsoft has hidden their tabs information with MSN Messenger, version 6.1. This means that it can’t be edited by the RantsTab application which thereby means that this project is on hold for the time being. I have seen a mini-application that patches the MSN Messenger’s EXE with new tabs, but that’s something I don’t want to get involved with; frankly, it’s a bit “dangerous” from a coding point of view. If RantsTab returns in a new version, you’ll read it here first!
Category Archives: GeekStuff
Motorola’s MPx200 on AT&T
Went shopping today after seeing the special CompUSA is running on the new Motorola phone that’s running Microsoft‘s SmartPhone software. They’re offering it for $299, with a $50 rebate, plus another $50 rebate if you turn in an old phone, with an SD card of music, a mail in offer for some Office document viewers and a Jabra EasySpeak Bluetooth headset. After the rebates and net worth of the Jabra set, I think the phone ends up being $20. What’s it like? Pretty freakin’ good actually and I’m a bit surprised by that.
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Sick of Slow Adobe Reader Startup Times?
This came from FurryGoat who got it from Sanjay’s Coding Tips who found it at Darrell Norton’s blog. It’s a short list of things to do to speed up the launching of Adobe’s Reader – I’m posting them here to remind myself what to change after my next reformat or machine upgrade…
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iTunes for Windows
As anyone that knows me can tell you, I’m a huge fan of the iPod. I’ve had one since its first release (when it was Mac only) and have been using XPlay to sync my music to and from my PC. While this has been very working well for over a year – and I hate that music application that Apple included with the Windows version – iTunes 4.1 for Windows came out from Apple this week, so I thought I’d take a look at it. Sadly, Mac-formatted iPods do not work with iTunes for Windows, so I had to make a choice… it’s all working now, but what did I do?
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AppleCare Rebate!
Way back when, I opted to get rid of my 12″ PowerBook and Switch-Back to a Windows based notebook in the form of a Sony Z1A. Having gone through CompUSA, they stood by their products in getting me the Z1A, but I found myself with a three year AppleCare contract but without an Apple product. I had read online that you could request a pro-rated refund on the warrantee so I contact Apple about it and many months later they finally got around to addressing the issue.
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What’s on My Mind Lately?
All types of stuff really. What’s been going on you ask? Stuff… and plenty of it!
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Must Have in the US!
Not often that I have appliance envy, but I do. This is something that is a year or two old in Japan already and pretty freakin’ neat. Basically it’s a washer/dryer that works like a dishwasher would: first washes and then dries that same load of laundry, all in the same compact sized bin. Meanwhile Americans finally decided to design a paint can that has a drip free spout and a twist off cap. And people wonder why we’re not always ahead of the innovation curve.
Test Drive: D-Link’s USB Products (They suck!)
This Rant has been over a month in the “waiting” because I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt. Pretty stupid of me, I know, but when dealing with a hardware vendor I do have an inexplicable large amount of patience when their products are defective. This is especially true when dealing with a brand new/1.0 product. So I’ve been waiting a month for D-Link to step up their support on their DWL-122 WiFi/USB and they’ve failed miserably – in fact, while I’ve been waiting for a new driver from them, I’ve discovered that their DBT-120 Bluetooth/USB adapter sucks almost as much!
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Public Wi-Fi in a Death Spiral
From the FurryGoat: I do agree with the basic fact that I’m not going to go to McDonald’s specify to find a hotspot, but don’t try to sell me that GRPS will beat it out – it’s just to damn slow. It’s not about where the connection is located, but rather the convenience of connectivity. That’s not the half of it, m’boy!
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For Lease, By Owner: Coder
It’s official: I’ve been laid off by my daytime employer. Ironically, this is some pretty freakin’ good news… I know that might sound weird but, honestly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
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Why Steve Sucks
Rare for me to attack a fellow online blogger, much less some that’s been a great friend for almost ten years, but Steve really sucks. He always seems to start these side projects that end up costing me money, time and energy. It happens every so often, but it is an ongoing process. He finds a great new toy or mentions a neat project in passing and I have to have one of my own or act on the idea… his Windows Media Center Edition based PC is one of the more recent things that has made me think “Hmmm”.
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Outages
Lately there’s been some news stories being published lately about a ring of hackers that have been attacking web servers with Denial of Service attacks and it’s been wreaking havoc all over the ‘net – if this site is up and down over the next week or two it will return! I am not shutting down the site, so if it’s out of commission give it a little while and it should be back up within the hour. Of course posting a “we might be down” message to a web site is like telling someone “if you came back to read this note, don’t come back here!” but it’s the best I could do.
RantsTab (1.2) – A Mini-Hack That’s Cool
I guess I’m biased to the “cool” part, but this is a mini-hack that’s got some very kick-ass potential. As outed by NeoWin back in May, it seems that the released version of MSN’s new Instant Message client (MSN-IM) has been opened up a bit and now allows users to add new tabs to the main IM window. What does this mean? If you run this RantsTab utility (now version 1.2) you can view the ten most recent Rants from this web site. Continue on to read the “fine print”…
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A Case of Bad Geek-karma
A little while ago I wondered if there was such a thing as bad Geek-karma and given certain experiences, I truly believe that it exists. Shortly after writing that bit, Kasia noted that her servers know when she’s on vacation; they wait until she’s gone before they end a long run of problem-free operation. Jeremy has noted that some of his servers only collapsed when he was at least 1000 miles away. It’s a proven fact: Bad Geek-karma exists and can hit without warning. My recent experiences with an iBook have been a first-hand reminder of how bad Geek-karma can screw up an otherwise perfectly good day.
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Oops, I Geeked It Again
I’ve often wondered if there was such a thing as bad Geek-karma and I’m nearly 100% certain that there is. I mean all Geeks have had the days where we’ve attempted to upgrade a PC and there’s just one problem after another. You go to add a new DVD drive to your PC and once you get the cover off you realize that there’s a problem with the cable. Then a jumper is missing. Then you discover the BIOS has to be flashed a new version, so you need to put it all back together to do that, only to find out that you don’t have a driver for the new drive. After that you spend the next four hours on web sites trying to read Korean, Tagalog, Japanese and Chinese because you only have the drive manufacturer’s name and they don’t have a US web site. At some point during the driver search, the hard drive collapses and you need to reinstall Windows. What else could this be but bad Geek-karma? And while this particular example is rare to occur these days – Windows automatically supports almost every DVD drive made after 2001 – the premise still stands even if the particular parts are different. I should know because I had two old typos reversed this week and I attribute the creation of both typos to bad Geek-karma.
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