Sometimes, peoples’ lack of maths skills amaze me.

I was at the airport the other night, buying some stuff.

Total cost $41.35.

Gave the old bloke $60 (3 x $20).

I received $28.65 change, a “bonus” of $10.

Spent the next five minutes arguing with the old bloke, that he was short-changing himself $10.

Now some people might say “… serves him right, keep the extra $10.” 

But the thought of the poor bloke having to make up cash from his wage stopped me doing that.

Andy Blume, over at Spatula City,  wrote about something similar in his post: It’s French For ""Go away"".

(if you don’t know what an OST file is, see below)

There are four options, one of these below might work for you.
NOTE: This is a work in progress post.  It will be updated when I learn something.

The OST2PST conversation method.

1. Backup ost file(s)
2. Rename outlook.ost to outlook.pst
3. Use scanpst.exe from Outlook 2002 (in C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033) to repair outlook.pst
   (You can always copy scanpst.exe from an alternative installation, include MAPI32.DLL and GAPI32.DLL)
4. Rename outlook.pst back to outlook.ost
5. Run OST2PST which will then convert the file successfully to outlook.pst
6. Outlook can then open the outlook.pst file

Sources:
MS Exchange Blog: OST to PST
Geeks To Go: Converting Outlook .OST files to .pst

This method may not work with Outlook 2003 or later OST files.

Modify the header file method
The type of Outlook file, whether it is a PST or OST, is stored in the header of the file.
It might be possible to modify the header, and open the modified file in Outlook.

The file format has been documented in “Personal Folder File (PFF) forensics” by Joachim Metz.

Compile and use the pffexport program method
“Extracts items from a Personal Folder File (OST or PST)”.  See the libpff site.

Buy any number of commercial products method.
I’ve tried none of these.  You are on your own.

So what is an OST file then?
If you’re asking this question, you probably don’t need to know. 

An Outlook Offline Storage Table (OST) file is a copy of your Exchange email account.  This copy allows you to access your (offline) email while you are not connected to a network.  Such as when you are travelling..

Update October 2009: Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation

One of our dogs is wearing out, due to old age.

He’s 14.

He’s developed a bit of a cough, so he’s been off to the vet.

First, the vet thought “enlarged heart, let’s get an x-ray”.

X-ray came back, no, heart looks normal, but “we’ll try him on some heart medicine in any case.”

No difference in cough, or behaviour.

So back to the vet.

“Well since you don’t want to consider heroic measures … “

Heroic measures.

The first time I heard about heroic measures was in a (fictional) book titled “Goshawk Squadron”, by Derek Robinson.  One of the characters was talking about using an axe to remove a patient’s limbs on the battlefield.  It was that, or the patient dying.  Heroic measures.

Strange to hear a vet say that.  And as soon as I heard that, I thought “No, we’ll be letting the dog enjoy his old age while he can.”

update: for the curious, the tablets were Vetmedin & Flusapex.

Was asked to analyse a library of Visual Basic 6 to determine the effort required to migrate it Visual Basic 2005/2008.

The good news was that most of the VB6 programs share common modules, so it will just be a case of fixing those modules once, then compiling and testing.

The bad news is that, yes, indeedly, the past is another country, they did things differently there; the code isn’t widely documented, and not what you’d call best practice these days.

An example is the use of the RtlCopyMemory function, which now is “banned” by Microsoft as it’s not secure.

Anyhow, to count the lines of VB6 code we have, I used a free utility called VB 6 Pure Code Lines Calculator, and I found it to be fast and accurate.

A novel idea, and a clever advertisement, all rolled into one.

Probably the safest way to fire a submachine gun, this side of a war.

Source: originally seen over at channeldvorak.com

(“Tilt, Cock, Lock, Look” is known as an ‘Immediate Action drill’.  Google it, if you’re that curious)

A month ago Nitin Kohli commented:

HP Universal Print Driver (UPD) works very well with Novell.
Please fidn the info on Novell Support site.
http://www.novell.com/support/viewContent.do?ex…
Hope this will helps to all, who have issues with HP UPD on Novell environemnt.

No, it does not.  Let’s look at that Novell article I linked to in my blog post, and the same one you quoted back to me:

Does iPrint work with HP’s Universal Printer Drivers?

… While the functionality with the UPD and the iPrint Client 5.12 is better, there continues to be some limitations.  The ability to configure a UPD with iPrint’s Printer Driver Profile (PDP) feature will require drastic changes in the PDP creation process.   These changes have not been implemented yet.

…

iPrint cannot present the correct printer driver options to the administrator to configure the PDP when the driver is universal.  One consideration Novell is investigating is to change the PDP creation process to prompt the administrator to provide the IP address of the printer so the universal driver can present the appropriate configurable driver features specific to that printer model to the administrator. …

“These changes have not been implemented yet”.

No, that’s because they are in UPD 5.0, which is due for release late June..

The situation we have at the moment, is that we can’t purchase and install new HP printers because of the UPD 5.0 requirement.
Even with iPrint 5.12 and UPD 5.0, we will still need to change our iPrint settings so we can have the privilege of using new HP printers.

How long have we been waiting?

Since February (UPD 4.7.2 release didn’t work for us), IF we’re being kind to HP.
JULY 2008 if we’re being bloody honest about it.

Seems I’m not the only person upset with HP.

My previous HP UPD posts have been:
HP lets buggy print driver lurk on web. (March 2009)
“Unable to store job at printer” (January 2009)
Still a pack of cheap bastards (December 2008)
HP still dragging their feet on the Universal Print Driver (November 2008)
HP Universal Print Driver – shame it doesn’t work with Novell Netware (October 2008)

A good task is:

1. Measurable
2. Has one owner
3. 8 – 120 hours
4. Is an action.

… Yes, let me introduce you to the professional PHP programmer. You see, PHP is like a handgun. On its own, it is simply an inanimate tool that has no moral leaning. In the hands of a responsible citizen, it can be used to the benefit of society. But in the hands of someone who is untrained or mentally unstable, it can be used to commit horrible atrocities. …
- The Register: Microsoft arms half-wit developers with PHP handgun

This Register article talks about the fact that Microsoft is going to allow PHP on it’s Azure cloud platform.

I agree with the author, PHP is misused by 99% of the idiots out there.  I’ve seen enough bad PHP code to last a life time.  As I’ve said before, I can debug it, but it’s darn unlikely that I’ll be coding in it.

• Lead by example
• Constantly communicate a sense of urgency
• Know your scope, manage it relentlessly
• Report the past – Manage the future
• Know your governance model and use it appropriately
• Keep on track with the weekly control cycle
• Manage your stakeholders proactively
• Escalate high-priority issues early
• Keep your focus on the end game
• The plan is your map, ensure you know where you are

(source: unknown)

Travelled on Tiger Airways recently, and the service wasn’t too bad.

Sure, Terminal 4 at Tullamarine Airport is a converted shed, and the baggage pickup area IS A shed, but you do expect that for such cheap fares, eh?

The downside is that Tiger fly Airbus A320* aircraft.

I don’t like them.  They make strange sounds.  They tend to crash.

From a 2001 news article:

The French have also blamed the pilots in every major fatal crash of the Airbus aircraft, built by a four-nation consortium whose headquarters are at Toulouse in France. In one of the crashes, the aircraft was being flown by the most senior aviator in his field: Airbus’s chief test pilot, the Englishman Nick Warner.

As with Concorde, the Airbus is fly-by-wire, which means that computers act as intermediaries between the pilots and the flying controls. Unlike Boeing’s “fly-by-wire” systems, which give pilots the ultimate control of the aircraft’s operations, the Airbus designers have a view that planes can be made safer if, in certain circumstances, software imposes “hard limits” on what the pilots can and cannot do.

One thing to note.

When Tiger Airlines say that “Check-in desks close strictly 45 minutes before scheduled departure time.”, you should believe them.  Even if the aircraft is 2 hours late, and is the last flight of the night.

* – macabrely known as the “John Wayne” aircraft.  It climbs mountains, knocks down trees & kills Indians.

“Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.”