Productivity Meter Tracks Your Computer Usage (Lifehacker Australia)

Windows only: Productivity Meter is a time tracking tool from Fruitful Time, makers of the task manager we reviewed earlier this year.

Once installed the software sits in the background and keeps tabs on your activity. Productivity Meter tracks the active versus idle time, how your active time is split among applications, which applications were used the most, and which websites you browsed and for how long.

When Organisations Implement Something that Makes Sense (and even better when its yours)

… So enough suspense…what I am talking about is “proximity printing” which basically means that once you send a document to be printed from your PC, it wont print until you have swiped your card (in our case just our standard RAS access cards) against one of the additional new swipe machines that have appeared next to the printers. The best part of this is that you can swipe your card wherever you are – be it another building or even another office and that document will print out there and then …

The dot before the Net – IE8- Web Slices – Keep yourself updated!

… With the IE 8 web slices feature, your web site customers can now subscribe to parts of the web page which they would want to get updated about. Areas within a particular webpage can be marked as a web slice by the web developers when creating the sites. …

The Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit is now available! (Terminal Services Team Blog)

Craig Swartz on Microsoft – Micromanaging Macro Movement

As firms have been migrating from Office2003 to Office2007, the queston of what to do about the macros comes up. This is especially true as the limitation of rows was addressed by adding more character headings to the columns, which might have also been a name range before.

To solve this, a company called convertertechnology has a tool which inspects Macros …

I remember this company, convertertechnology.  We tried to get them to do some Microsoft Access 97 conversion work for us, after Microsoft recommended them.  The response from convertertechnology, “only 2000 desktops, too small for us to be interested.”

My Passion My Windows – New Feature, Active directory recycle bin

With the AD recycle bin, one would be able to recover any accidentally deleted objects just by running a command. When you enable Active Directory Recycle Bin, all link-valued and non-link-valued attributes of the deleted Active Directory objects are preserved, and the objects are restored in their entirety to the same consistent logical state that they were in immediately before deletion. For example, restored user accounts automatically regain all group memberships and corresponding access rights that they had immediately before deletion, within and across the domains. …

Something the NT Government could have used when a disgruntled former employee deleted the identities of more than 10,000 public servants and shutting down the entire system.

Where did my disk space go ? [very long directory names, system directories, symbolink and other hard links ...], meet xdir.exe

This year, taxpayers will receive an Household Stimulus Package. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:

Q.   What is an Household Stimulus Package?
A.    It is money that the federal government will send to Taxpayers.

Q.   Where will the government get this money?
A.    From taxpayers.

Q.   So the government is giving me back my own money?
A.   Only a smidgen.

Q.   What is the purpose of this payment?
A.   The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition
        TV set, thus stimulating the economy.

Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China?
A. Shut up.

Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the Economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:

• If you spend that money at K-Mart, all the money will go to China.
• If you spend it on petrol, it will go to the Arabs.
• If you purchase a computer, it will go to India.
• If you purchase fruit and vegetables, it will go to South East Asia or New Zealand (unless you buy organic).
• If you buy a car, it will go to Japan.
• If you purchase useless crap, it will go to Taiwan.

And none of it will help the economy.

We need to keep that money here. You can keep the money here by spending it at garage sales, going to a football game, or spending it on prostitutes, beer or tattoos, since those are the only businesses still here.

(the above received from a reader via email)

The last payment worked so well, didn’t it:
 
 

My favourite PDA, ever, would be a tie between the HP Ipaq 5450 and the Palm Treo 650.

Today, I’ll talk about the Palm Treo.

It was small, was a GSM-capable phone, and ran a colour version of the Palm operating system.

It had surprisingly few flaws, in fact only two that I can think of:

1. Keyboard was a bit small.  I have big fingers, and I find the BlackBerry Curve difficult to operate as well.
2. The SIM card would wobble, and the Palm phone signal would drop out, “No signal”

So you’re thinking, Dale has described this as his favourite PDA but dislikes Palms.

Why?

The fiddly proprietary data cable that every single Palm uses.  What’s up with that?  Why can’t Palm use a mini-USB like everyone else?

is a small program I’ve written to export attachments and emails from the Lotus Notes email client.

Now there are commercial programs which can do the same thing, but since I had a little time on my hands, I wrote LNME.  Learnt a bit about Lotus Notes programming at the same time.

It’s difficult to code for Lotus Notes, which is why you don’t see many code examples on the internet.

And I found that Visual Studio 2008 is more forgiving of syntax errors than VS 2005.  Things which would just work in VS 2008, would throw an exception in VS 2005.

When I get some more time, I will be making further improvements to LNME.

Anyhow, you can read further about LNME, and download it, here.

But his boss had the last word. ‘You guys have a few things to learn. First, Rickover is the customer. We don’t ignore our customers. …’
- GE Engineer

I’ve been doing a “Mary Webb”.  Mary, bless her heart, was a PC support technician, known for asking the same question, many times, of different people.  Hence the phrase, doing a Mary Webb

Mary would have been ideally suited working Service Discovery & Transition, the process where we take over support of something from an external company.

We end up asking the same questions multiple times, in order to discover the truth.  And just like Rashomon, we get different answers.

“So is the service a production service, or is it still being developed?”

Yes, it’s in production and fully supported.
- the system owner

We think it’s fully supported.
- the customer

It’s not supported, and it’s not production ready
- the support guys

… The other one that comes to mind is also the very first we did, called “Autopsy”, written by Larry Kaplow.  Absolutely exquisite.  It’s about a little girl suffering from a brain tumour, and everyone in the hospital constantly sings her praises as a brave little angel.  But House commits this absolute blasphemy of doubting her bravery.  You’re not allowed to do that, especially on TV and especially with children.  People who suffer from cancer are sanctified.  But House being House, he makes the shocking but nonetheless inarguable point that not everybody can be as brave as everyone else.  If everyone’s a hero, the word has no meaning. …

- Hugh Laurie talking about his all-time favourite House episodes, 2009

It’s a darn sexy little thing.  I’ve carried one for the last week, and loath it.
Here’s why.

1. User interface is sluggy.  The Apple iPhone sets the standard here, the Touch Diamond is a pale imitation.
2. Battery life, two days if you are lucky.
3. User interface is too complicated, and difficult to navigate.
4. No external memory card slot.  Not a big problem, but the day you’ll go to share something with someone, is the day you’ll miss it.
5. Drop-ability.  Have not dropped it yet, but with it’s sharp corners, you just know it’s going to smash.