SearsPhoto…WHAT are you thinking?????
Got this e-mail from searsphoto.com. Note that they included full login info (name AND password) in the e-mail…SENT IN CLEAR TEXT ACROSS THE INTERNET!!! What are they thinking??????
Outlook 2007 RSS Feeds installed by default
Ran into this this morning. It appears that by default, Outlook 2007 installs with a few RSS feeds being pulled down. (See the screenshot below taken from a co-worker’s computer.) I didn’t realized that this was going on. The M$ at Home and M$ at Work are pre-populated with stuff going back to January 2005. The MSNBC News one starts when you install. I installed September 27, 2006. I had over 1000 items in that folder (MSNBC News)…taking up 5MB of my mailbox…and I didn’t know it was there!!!
Unless IT people disable this early on in their deployment of Office 2007, this could quickly eat up a lot of users’ mailbox space that users don’t know about and/or don’t care about. This shouldn’t have much effect on Exchange disk space because of single instance storage. I’m more concerned with users’ mailbox limits. In three and a half months, this grew to over 5MB on my system…In one year, this would be 20MB. My mailbox limit is 60MB. That would be a third of my mailbox taken up with garbage that a typical user wouldn’t even know is there…or care if they did know it was there.
Two Cool Utilities
I don’t do a lot of exploring of new computer utilities. I am pretty content with whatever I am currently using unless I get to a point of true frustration in trying to do something. My co-worker (Philip) does do a bit of exploring…and I have asked him to let me know when he finds something that I might be interested in. He did so recently.
Frustration #1 that I have had recently is a photo manipulation program. Something that goes beyond basic cropping and red-eye reduction. I had used GIMP for a while. It is very powerful…but “user friendly” is not on it’s feature set. Philip recently told me about Paint.net (www.getpaint.net). WOW. This program has a LOT of power and features…but is very easy to use. I won’t go into the feature set, but it is very good and best of all….FREE.
Frustration #2…desktop search. I have been using Google Desktop search for a while, but was frustrated that when I wanted to look for some random file (.exe, .bat, .vbs) I couldn’t use Google Desktop…it didn’t index those files…or it had to be set up special to do something like that. Enter Philip’s latest find…Windows Desktop Search (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx). Plain and simple…this thing rocks. It is customizable for a typical user to only search My Documents and E-mail, or for a more advanced user like myself to search the entire hard drive plus e-mail/etc. Once it is done indexing, it is really fast. Really, really fast. Personally…I’m sold.
Immigration
On Tuesday of this week an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy was struck by a hit and run driver. He died from those injuries last night. His name was Michael Callin. He was 26 years old. He was the brother-in-law of one of my friends.
The early indications are that this driver intentionally swerved to hit the officer. The driver, Allan Barahona, has a rap sheet a mile long. Other passengers in the car told authorities that he intentionally hit the officer…because he didn’t want to be arrested.
What does this have to do with immigration? According to the news this morning, Barahona is an illegal alien. He is in this country illegaly. Aside from violating the laws of this country by simply being here illegally, he has also continued to prove that he cares nothing for the laws of this country evidenced by his rap sheet.
WHY IS HE STILL IN THIS COUNTRY????????? This kind of junk infuriates me. We have laws for this. Why are they not being enforced? He is an illegal alien. DEPORT HIM!!! If he is deported…he doesn’t have the opportunity to violate the other laws…or kill our deputies.
My quick and dirty solution:
1. Harden the borders…ASAP. Make is so that as much as we are able…you don’t get into this country unless you are supposed to get in.
2. Deport all illegal aliens. No discussion, no second chances. If you are here illegally…you are gone. Period.
3. Streamline the process for legal immigration. Make it a desirable process.
Zero to Expert in One Week
So…our office is being reconfigured. Long story, but new office furniture is in the works. It has been a long plan. Well a week ago last friday, we get the realization that no planning has been done on how the wiring of the new furniture is going to take place…we need to plan it and quick.
Immediate emergency mode.
Philip came up with the statement that we have gone from zero to expert on physical network planning in one week. It has definitely been a lot of work. I have looked at the floor plans for dozens of hours at this point. My initial estimate of cable for the west half of the office is 17,000 feet of cable. Yep… 3.2 miles of cable. Lots of long hours. Lots of work. But strangely satisfying.
The Great Disconnect
Today has been frustrating. I have so many things in my mind. So much that I need to think about and take action on. So many things swirling through my mind. And I can’t seem to concentrate on any of them long enough to really do anything about them. I have projects around the house to work on. I need to fix Julie’s van. I need to take the van to get body work done. Investment decisions. Need to work on raising support. SMS…good grief SMS. There is so much to do with SMS…and I can’t THINK long enough to map out the plan. Exercise. Purchases that I want to make.
I need God’s help to concentrate. Like I was telling Philip recently…it’s entirely possible that God designed this weakness into my life to cause me to depend on him. Kind of like the quote that I have taped to my computer…Matthew 20:32 “What do you want me to do for you?” That is the story of the two blind men asking for help. It’s very obvious what they want…come on…it’s two blind beggars asking for help…what do you think they might want? Yet…Jesus asks them “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s not like he didn’t know what they wanted. Still…he wanted them to ask…to acknowledge their desire and dependance on him. Jesus still wants us to ask.
Where that has me…it’s entirely possible that Jesus has built a weakness into my life…an inability to handle lots of details without depending on him. He wants me to ask for help…to acknowledge my need for Him. To invite him into the details and ongoing aspects of my life.
computer rebuild
Weird thing…files just started disappearing from my desktop. They were there when I shut down. They weren’t there when I turned it on the next morning. Happened on two seperate occasions. Can’t trust it anymore…time for a rebuild.
Stinky thing is that I just rebuilt the thing in March. This may be the shortest life a computer rebuild has had with me. Bummer is that after the “standard” office install…I have more than 30 other programs and modifications to make for my install. Special text editors, plugins for Outlook, system admin programs, etc. Not to mention that backing up my data took well over an hour this morning. I’ve got a lot of “stuff” that needs to be culled.
I also think I’m going to change how I use my personal area on the network. Instead of syncing offline, I’m going to experiment with saving everything to the “My Documents” area and using RoboCopy to back it up to my personal area…with compression if RC supports that. We’ll see.
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The Realm of the Verbal Processor 