Reinke Faces Life

Does anyone know of an easy way to have LookOut (Microsoft Outlook 2003) to run all its rules against the inbox? I know I can do it by checking every rule in the box, but seems like its more work than it should be. Help?

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FROM A PRODUCTIVITY PORTFOLIO EMAIL

http://www.timeatlas.com/mos/The_News/General/Students_Benefit_from_Microsoft_Office_Promo/
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I just noticed in the latest Microsoft Press Pass that they are starting a campaign today called “The Ultimate Steal”. The deal is only for students, but the savings are substantial. For less than $60, you get Office Ultimate 2007. As with all deals, there are a few conditions.

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:10:28 -0700

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Why buy Microsoft when you can get open source stuff for free?

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http://www.roboform.com

Have a few situations where I think roboform2go could do a little better.

(1) When I resume, the roboform2go can’t remember where the fob was. even though it never left its place in the usb slot. Rerunning roboform2go fixes it.

(2) When I reboot, roboform2go restarts but the little icon — that gives me access easily to all the functions — gets “lost”. Rerunning roboform2go restores to its proper place.

(3) On resume, if I put the fob in too early in the boot process, then roboform2go never triggers to start.

I just think that it could be handled a little better.

For example, when roboform2go “loses” its fob, there should be a pick from the little icon to “look around for it”.

For example, when the little roboform2go icon goes “mia”, (Note: roboform2go is running and will supply data), there should be a secret key combo to restore the icon.

Just some kvetches that have been building up and I thought I’d mention them.

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Does anyone know how to work with Look Out (aka Outlook2003sp2) rule in any other way than the cruddy microsnooze user interface?

For example, when junk gets caught by LookOut or spam gets caught by CloudMark and I say “It’s OK”, they put it back in the inbox. Well my inbox is empty by design. I have rules that sort my inbound mail extensively. For example, if it’s coming from a known address, or to certain secret addresses, or has a secret word in the subject line, it gets sorted automagically to a specific folder. It allows me to allocate my time in priority order. But, when LookOut or Cloudmark just drop in the INBOX folder, the rules never execute against it. Argh! Help?

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Interesting that Microsoft Live Writer, when it takes an error, may post to a different blog than you expect. Extreme care need when using it!

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Can you beleive this response?

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From: Yahoo! Music Jukebox [mailto:migration-support@cc.yahoo-inc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 7:53 PM
To: Reinke’s Catch All Email
Subject: Re: Musicmatch Migration issue (KMM102549845V28118L0KM)

Hello ,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

To correct this issue, please uninstall then reinstall Yahoo! Music
Jukebox.

First, uninstall the Yahoo! Music Jukebox:

1. Make sure to exit the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. If you don’t, the uninstall will fail.

2. At the bottom left of your Windows screen, click the “Start” button.

3. Depending on your Windows version, select “Settings” and then ‘Control Panel’, or just look for ‘Control Panel’ in the menu shown when you click ‘Start.’

4. Open ‘Control Panel.’

5. Double-click or select “Add/Remove Programs.”

6. In the list of applications, select “Yahoo! Music Jukebox” and click the “Remove” button.

7. Click the “Next” button, then “Finished.”

If you see an error that the uninstall process failed, you will need to install the Yahoo! Music Jukebox following the instructions below and then uninstall the application by performing the above steps again.

Once the Yahoo! Music Jukebox is successfully uninstalled, you will need to reinstall. Note that uninstalling and reinstalling the Yahoo!
Music Jukebox is free, and does not affect your Yahoo! Music Unlimited account. You will simply need to sign in using your Yahoo! ID at the completion of the install process; you will be prompted to add in the music files already on your computer, and your subscription music (if any) will be automatically populated.

1. Close all running applications except for Internet Explorer.

2. Please then visit your respective URL:

U.S. Version:

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/dl/music/ymj/us/ymjsetup.exe

Canadian Version:

http://us.dl1.yimg.com/download.yahoo.com/dl/music/ymj/ca/ymjsetup.exe

2. “Save” the program (please do not “Run” it) and download it to the desktop.

3. From the desktop, run the installer file that you downloaded and follow the onscreen instructions.

4. Please Note: Download time can take anywhere from 1 to 25 minutes and
18 MB of free space is required to install the Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

5. After installing, click the icon on your desktop to start the Yahoo!
Music Jukebox. Sign in using your Yahoo! ID.

For more information about troubleshooting with the Yahoo! Music Jukebox, go to:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/jukebox/troubleshoot/index.html

Thank you again for writing Yahoo! Music.

Regards,

Yahoo! Customer Care
57994239

New and Improved Yahoo! Mail – better than ever!

Original Message Follows:
————————-

Mail-Id: 1187621904-6907
“Name:” : reinkefj
“Yahoo! ID:” : reinkefj
“Email Address:” :
“Current Operating System:” : Windows XP “Subject:” : Musicmatch Migration issue “WMP Version:” : Not set by user “If yes, check here:” : Not set by user “Additional Information” : Don't know what WMP version, Script error; workaround doesn't work. Argh!
While Viewing: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/jukebox/troubleshoot/troubleshoot03.html

Form Name: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/music/general.html

Yahoo ID: reinkefj : Yahoo id from cookie “https://amt.yahoo.com/amt/dosearch?.token=5y.Tu0qEPLfejWEUKFW_NSx14saef
_rBHh3JD_Or”

Other ID:

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6)
Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

REMOTE_ADDR: 68.87.100.77

REMOTE_HOST: 68.87.100.77

Date Originated: Monday August 20, 2007 – 07:58:24

——-

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Yuck!

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http://portableapps.com/suite

PortableApps.com Suite
your computer, without the computer™

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PortableApps.com Suite™ is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.

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Interesting. Your USB fob is all you need for any strange machine. Great idea. Even my personal machine is strange!

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http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/07/13/15-productive-uses-for-a-wiki/

15 Productive Uses for a Wiki
WEBWORKERDAILY

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A few of the things that are emerging about web workers is that 1) we do just about everything online; 2) we want to be able to access it from any computer, anywhere; and 3) it’s hard to organize all the stuff we use and do, in our work and personal lives.

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1) To-do list. Once you’ve learned the simple wiki markup language, creating a list is easy. And the most productive list, of course, is the to-do list. In fact, if you’re into GTD, you can set up multiple context lists for a simple GTD system — try GTD Tiddlywiki, dcubed, or MonkeyGTD for more integrated wiki solutions.

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Sigh, maybe I’ll try again. It’s the doing that is hard.

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text

FROM AN MLPF EMAIL

>Re: FLASH: Hoovers seems to be making a move into LinkedIn’s space
>Posted by: “vmwusa_2000”
>Sun Jun 24, 2007 8:55 am (PST)
>Nice job on the blog, by the way!
>And thanks for capturing the screenshot for us…

Vincent,

Thanks for the kind words. But, my blog is more of a whine. :-) Sort of like “Do Not Go Gently Into … ” as performed by Rodney Dangerfield. :-) I’m “raging”.

On a technical note about the screen capture, windoze users are often frustrated by capturing screen shots. As was I, until I found a free utility that makes it trivial. Gadwin Systems Print Screen 4.0 at http://www.gadwin.com/download/ is my “silver bullet”. (It’s free, so I’m not getting out of this message other than the satisfaction of helping my fellow human. And the acclaim at being a big fat old but TRICKY turkey.) So I use the PrintScreen button to trigger the GSPS software, edit the resultant JPEG with MSPAINT (i.e., cut the appropriate part, drop the old file, get a new file open, paste the good stuff in, and save it). From there getting the JPEG onto the BLOG is trivial. It’s then accessible to the millions of MLPF readers. If anyone needs further help, feel free to contact me on or off list and I’ll try to create a better explanation. Usually just knowing that there is a solution is enough for people to try to find that solution, their own solution, or a better solution. That is, if you think something is impossible, it is (AKA learned helplessness?).

I’m sure there are faster, better, easier, but I doubt cheaper solutions.

With being around you (i.e., VW creates the MLPF and genre), there’s no doubt that this is a very minor contribution to the whizdum wars. But we all do what we can to spread light.

Again thanks for the kind words,
fjohn

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A BLOGDESK competitor, one has to at least consider the offering from the Evil Empire. Clearly in my mind, it starts off with one big strike against it. It integrates with IE7 and not firefox. Strike Two. Now let’s see if it posts to WORDPRESSDOTCOM?

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OK so it did stick a post in the blog. Two strikes and looking for a third. :-)

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BLOGDESK26.600 was released.

http://www.sticky-notes.net/sticky-notes-software-free.html

Sticky Notes Software

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This free software allows you to create sticky notes on your computer desktop to remind you of important events.

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Comes highly recommended. I’ll try it.

http;//www.blogdesk.org

Highly recommended and superbly supported.

FROM A POST ON BLOGDESKDOTORG:

Periodically, BLOGDESK “disappears”. I leave it up, open, and blog when I have time. Since the upgrade, BLOGDESK disappears. It’s not on the taskbar, not can I alt-tab task switch to it. When I look at what processes are running, there it is. If you use the “switch to” in the process view, nothing happens. It’s like a little kid sulking in their room. :-) If I terminate the task from the process view, it goes away peacefully (i.e., I don’t see any effects). If I then restart it from the program menu or quick launch it runs fine. Could this behavior be from that dll that wouldn’t register? Is there another bug? Am I the only “problem child”? Your attention when you have time would be appreciated. It is only severity 4.

UPDATE: The developer fixed it. Try and get that from Microsoft!

http://www.roboform.com/

RoboForm is an award-winning automated password manager and web form filler with some serious Artificial Intelligence.

FROM MY EMAIL TO MY LUDDITE FRIEND

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Look at roboform2go for your sign up hang up. I use it. One of the few packages I’ve paid money for. I use it to sign up when needed, generate a unique password for the site, and it does all the memorization work. I have a few passwords hat I trust to no one (i.e., banking, my websites, and certain documents) but for the most stuff it handles all the details.

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Passwords have been in use since Julius Caesar. The security principle is a shared secret between you and something else (i.e., website, service, application, platform, whatever). To keep the integrity of that shared secret, you shouldn’t use the same password for different sites. Or, reuse it in any way. Or, generate it by adding a digit to your middle name!

Some “rules of thumb”:

(1) Passwords need to be unguessable.

(2) They need to be long enough prevent someone trying everyone by brute force.

(3) They need to use lots of possibilities (i.e., 26 letters become 52 values if you use upper and lower case).

(4) It can’t be in the dictionary (i.e., or the word in reverse); it’s called a “dictionary attack”.

SO if you have to have a slew of passwords, what do you do?

I suggest using a tool, like ROBOFORM, as your “extended memory”, like I do, for low risk uses. Routine logons are a snap. It will also speed your initial sign up, generate a complex password, and remember the whole thing for you.

For your high risk uses (i.e., financial sites), where a compromise could be a disaster, use your memory. If you have more than 10 high risk uses, then you need to consolidate your uses.

I recommend using a USB THUMB DRIVE with ROBOFORM PASS2GO. It does all the above, but you keep the passwords on it. So the password data is not on the machine that you use! When you’re not using the computer, put the drive in your pocket. So, if your computer gets stolen, then you should have the USB THUMB DRIVE with all the passwords in your pocket.

Losing your notebook is bad. Losing all your passwords is a disaster.

I LOVE!! BLOGDESK.

It allows me to compose my blog entries off-line and post them at my leisure across seven blogs. (No, you have to find them on your own! Guarantee you can’t!)

When all my posts started to be posted with “comments off”, I took me a week to recognize the fact. (I thought no one cared!) Then, after six rounds back and forth with the WordPress support. Another user discovered that BLOGDESK needed a fix. Hey great!

BUT, when I went to upgrade my stuff burped. A few go arounds and it might be working.

http://www.joomla.org/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Cutting Edge Content Management

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Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.

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I think the blogging metaphor was a good first step.

But when one thinks of the web as a personal tool, you need more. Sometimes you need a simple blog, sometimes forums, maybe a wiki, and of course there are always websites and webpages.

What attracts me to “content management” is that it is sort of the web version of the “unified field theory”. You can pull all you ever create into it, never lose a bit or a byte, and reuse it as you see fit. You can’t be held hostage to an ISP by free space (space is now so cheap), a WSP (that induces you to use its free tool that locks your data, or any number of lesser lockins by client-side software (i.e., Publisher, FrontPage).

It’s more work than a free blog at WordPress. But, as I am learning, free can be very very expensive.

http://drupal.org/about

About Drupal

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Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including

* Community web portals
* Discussion sites
* Corporate web sites
* Intranet applications
* Personal web sites or blogs
* Aficionado sites
* E-commerce applications
* Resource directories
* Social Networking sites

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Maybe I’ve outgrown blogging. It doesn’t wow me like it once did. It hasn’t engendered or created the cooperative conversation I was hoping it would.

I know I am disillusioned with websites. They are static snapshots of the past. They don’t integrate of play nice with other uses.

Wikis are a content system of sorts but hmmm they don’t seem to jump up and create conversations.

Perhaps, I need more?

http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2007/
04/some_sage_advic.html

http://tinyurl.com/3xoyjt

April 23, 2007
Some Sage Advice

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Act 2007 Premium for Workgroups is reliant on SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. It turns out that the very installation of Act breaks all of our other SQL instances. That includes Sharepoint, Backup Exec and other critical apps. It’s a one-way upgrade too. So there is no ‘uninstall.’ The cure? Uninstall SBS2003 and reinstall. Oh, and yes, the files that Backup Exec has recorded — unusable.

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Ed (Gripeline) Foster always has some good “heads up” type stuff.

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu704

Latest Ubuntu delivers on the promise of Open Source

While millions consider whether to pay for Vista, the Ubuntu project releases its secure, high performance, free desktop and server editions.

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LONDON, April 16, 2007 – For users wanting a secure, feature rich alternative to Microsoft Windows, Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today the Thursday release of Ubuntu version 7.04.

Ubuntu is the award-winning Linux distribution for the desktop, laptop, thin client and server which brings together the best of open source software every 6 months. Ubuntu 7.04 desktop edition includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support.

Ubuntu 7.04 server edition adds support for hardware facilities that speed up the use of virtual machines as well as other improved hardware support, making it an excellent choice as a web, database, file and print server, the fastest growing area of Linux server use. Ubuntu’s already outstanding support for thin clients is boosted with advanced print and sound support.

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I can’t wait to try it. Badger was good but no wireless. I’m expecting great things out of this release!

http://techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm

Gizmo
Ian Richards

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6.1 A Free Utility That Stops Programs From Hogging Your PC

It was driving me mad. My laptop would sporadically run at 100% CPU utilization and lock up. It defied all attempts at analysis as the PC was seized and I couldn’t do anything. Only a hard reboot was possible, but on rebooting the problem was gone.

Eventually I solved it with a superb little utility called Process Tamer, written by “Mouser” over at Donation Coder. Process Tamer is a monitor that watches the CPU utilization of all running processes. Once the usage of a single process gets above a certain level (by default 70%) Process Tamer reduces the usage by lowering the process priority.

It’s a simple idea and Process Tamer implements it immaculately. With Process Tamer installed, the next time the problem occurred on my laptop it didn’t totally lock up but rather just ran very slowly. This allowed me to do a quick diagnosis. The problem turned out to be simple but non-obvious. Two programs, Diskeeper and X1, had been accidentally scheduled to start at the same time and were getting into an embrace of death. It was unexpected, as these two normally peacefully co-exist. Simply re-scheduling the programs to start at different times solved the problem.

I couldn’t have solved the problem as easily without Process Tamer. However Process Tamer has much broader application than just this kind of problem.

It’s a great tool for preventing any one program from hogging your processor. Every user has experienced the situation where their PC has been slowed down to the point of being unusable, by a background program such as a desktop search program, that starts and takes all the resources. Process Tamer will stop that from ever happening again.

For the same reason it can also help speed up your Windows Startup. Make sure though, that you enable Process Tamer to start automatically with Windows. By default it does not, but it’s easily changed from within the program’s options.

Yet another use for Process Tamer is intra-server load balancing. It’s near ideal for this task.
If you actually want a program to able to use all available resources, such as a digital editing program, you can set the program to be excluded from Process Tamer’s watchful eye.

I was so impressed with Process Tamer that I’ve permanently installed it on my laptop. It takes only around 6MB of memory space and its own CPU usage is so low I could barely measure it.

Process Tamer is available for free from the Donation Coder site. They use a novel licensing system: you have to register to get a free license key which allows you to download any number of programs on the site. This key lasts six months after which you must return to the site to download another free license key. After a year you are given a permanent license. Alternatively, you can make a once-up donation of any size and get a permanent key straight away. It’s a clever and ethical way to encourage users to recognize the work done by freeware authors and I support it fully. I donated generously and I hope you do too.
Donationware, Windows 2K, XP, 2.23MB

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/index.html

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Hmmm, may be useful to put in place.

http://www.pgp.com/

Rest Secured

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The PGP Encryption Platform delivers comprehensive enterprise data protection. Rest Secured.™

The PGP Encryption Platform enables organizations to address a broad range of business and regulatory data security and privacy requirements with solutions that are flexible, scalable, and easily deployed and managed from a single, unified management console.

PGP solutions allow enterprises to deploy gateway- and desktop-based encryption based on specific requirements for data security within the organization. PGP products can secure internal and external communications, data stored on servers, desktops, and laptops, and automated backups and data transfers.

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Yes, but … …

… … assuming you can get the trial software down from their web sites.

(I followed their instructions, kept getting “url not found” message using the url in their email, gave up yesterday. After replying to the email “ng”. No response.)

Came back to it and the software downloaded. Hey, making progress. (You think?)

Installed it. With the required reboot. (Argh!)

Then comes activation!

Like Microsoft, you have to activate it. It doesn’t. Says “no connect to the inet”. Right! No link to support. No options to appeal. And, nothing in the help that “helps” or identifies how to contact them.

So, if I have all these problems (again) when they are trying to SELL me their software, then what will be my experience after I start using it?

If I get my data secured with their software and it locks up, then what would I do?

Nah, not for me.

http://www.myuninstalledlife.com/effective-startup

4 effective way to start your online web 2.0 apps
December 7, 2006 at 10:20 pm

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In Firefox, bookmark pages in a certain bookmark folder, and then open the pages by right-clicking the bookmark folder and choose “Open All in tabs”

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With a tip of the hat to myuninstalledlife, a featured site in my blogroll, I’ll steal this tip. I too want to be “uninstalled”. That doesn’t sound right, having just read a classmates obit, but you get what I mean. Less platform; more perform!