Archive for April 2005

Has your dog filed its 1040-DOG, Individual Canine Income Tax Return?

David Strom has an excellent entry on “The Flat Earth Society.” In the article, he mentions an article that went live today about CarPCs. I never knew anything about the topic until I worked with O’Reilly behind the scenes on one of its newest books, CarPC Hacks.

I emailed David on yesterday (before the article went live) and told him about this because his article sounded like it was going to be about the topic. Sure enough, the guy behind the book is the inspiration for the article and at the end of the article is a video interview with Damien Stolarz. How’s that for an example of a flat world?

On top of that, a contact at Adobe emailed me that “David Strom mentioned you had questions about Adobe CS2…” Knockout punch.

The other day, I posted an entry on the pronunciation of misters and messers. Then yesterday, I get a link from Mark Hurst to Do You Speak American? President Bush is notorious for his misprounciation of nuclear (From the page: N(Y)OO-klee-ur. For George’s sake, don’t say NOO-kyuh-lur.).

Wow. I never expected my simple submission to This Is Broken to result in so many comments. A person pointed out this is a site map. Almost everything is going to be a link on a site map. True, but black text tells my subconscious that it’s not a link. I’ve seen sites that don’t use underlines, and that’s fine. But something needs to be different and NOT in black.

What’s awful are sites that use bold, colors, underlines, or a mix to highlight text when they are NOT links.

Kranz On Copy made me think about titles and pronouns. I always pronounce “Messers” in my head as “mess-ers.” Thankfully, I never need to say this word out loud. I embarrass myself enough times mispronouncing things.

Recently, I emailed an editor of a newsletter about the Ms., Mr., and Mrs. issue. Some situations call for formally addressing a person, but it’s risky because today so many names could be female or male. Sean (Young) and Michael (Learned), for example. I work with NYU’s online masters program that has many international students in the program. It has happened a few times when I thought someone was female then later learned the person was male and vice versa.

That’s why I struggled with naming my middle child. I liked a name, but wondered if people would think he was a girl. It worked out and it has not been a problem. My name… I get letters addressed to Mr. Meryl Evans at least once a month. The male variation is Merrill.

The he / she situation is also frustrating. I typically do what I can to avoid using either without substituting “their” when it’s referring to ONE person. But when it is not possible to avoid he or she, then I pick one. Can we have a word to represent both genders in singular form?!?! Can we use M. to represent all titles (Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss)?

Getting a new PC is exciting and a pain. It’s exciting because you get a faster processor, more storage and all the latest stuff even though it’s outdated as soon as it hits your desk. The pain comes with re-installing all of your programs, re-customizing your preferences for programs, applications, and Windows, and transfering data to the new PC. [ more... ]

Getting a new PC is exciting and a pain. It’s exciting because you get a faster processor, more storage and all the latest stuff even though it’s outdated as soon as it hits your desk. The pain comes with re-installing all of your programs, re-customizing your preferences for programs, applications, and Windows, and transferring data to the new PC.

It can be simplified by using a bootable external drive or something similar and letting it load everything on the new PC. However, if you are like me, you probably had a few problems here and there that couldn’t be found and fixed. So it’s better to start with a clean slate.

I am getting a new PC at the office and my hard drive crashed on my laptop. There’s nothing I can do about the laptop, but I kept it simple since it’s a supporting computer rather than the main PC. I often used a remote application to connect to my desktop from the laptop. Therefore, the laptop had few loaded programs and data. I did try to make a backup of my user profile before the crash, but it was having too many problems and the backup didn’t happen.

As for my work PC, here are the steps I took to prepare for moving to a new computer.

* Ensured all my work was on the network server. I kept backups of important files on the hard drive as a safety measure after my past experience.

* Deleted everything that I put on the hard drive.

* Made backups of data files such as the password manager’s file.

* Took a screen shot of my Windows desktop, so I can rearrange things on the new PC to closely match the way I had things on the old PC.

* Used Belarc Advisor to create a print out of what’s loaded on the machine.

* Changed my password to a temporary one that’s nothing like my original so support could get in when I wasn’t at my desk.

* Copied the properties of specially-made shortcuts like the one I use to lock the computer with one click.

* If you use Outlook, make notes of your preferences and options. Mine didn’t get transferred.

* If you use the Office toolbar (typically on the side or top of the screen), add the programs and folders back in based on the screen shot you took earlier. I could not remember how to change the icons in the toolbar, so here’s how: right-click on the icon you wish to change, select Properties, and Change Icon.

* Print the list of fonts loaded on your computer if you’ve added additional fonts.

I sat on this entry for almost a week to see if I thought of anything else. Add a comment if I missed something.

That’s what I call proactive customer service. P22, an type foundry, sends an email newsletter. When the company sent out its last issue, I received many copies of it. I didn’t complain because I know screw ups happen. Soon after this happened, the company sent a letter of an apology offering an explanation for those interested along with a free font for downloading. Excellent lesson in turning a bad situation into a good one.

A few days ago, I wrote about my new keyboard and mouse set. I’m happy with it except for one thing… it sometimes skips letters in no predictable fashion. I wrote to Microsoft Support about it and a tech replied within a few hours with four steps for resolving or narrowing down the problem. The tech proposed it could be an issue with one of the following:

1. Issue with the ports.

2. Use of Port replicators, hubs etc.

3. RF Interference.

4. Issue with the keyboard itself.

Before you read the rest of the article… do you have any PC or PDA-related questions you’d like answered? Email me at merylk @ gmail.com.