I’m just about read to rip out my hair here, and I can’t seem to figure out what the problem is: seemingly at random, Firefox will start to incorrectly interpret keyboard characters. The ‘ becomes a #. The / becomes an ѐ. When it first started happening, I thought it was Vista-wide problem, but I realized it wasn’t happening in Outlook, Windows Mail, Word, or anywhere else, including the Vista shell. Then I thought it might have been some sort of problem with the Logitech keyboard software, but it’s a Firefox-only problem from what I can see because if I shut down Firefox and re-start it, the problem goes away. In fact, now that I think about it, it seems that it only tends to happen if Firefox has been open all day or multiple days – which makes me wonder if it’s some sort of memory leak issue. Any other Firefox users seen a problem like this?
This Just In: XFX GeForce 7950GT Does Not Fit In Shuttle SD39P2
This is one of those things I’m posting solely for the purpose of perhaps saving someone else the same headache I’m now going through because I wasn’t able to find this information when I was searching. In a nutshell: I wanted to get the fastest, but completely silent, video card that I could find for the Shuttle SD39P2 system I was putting together. I looked at every option on the market, and it boiled down to one: the XFX GeForce 7950GT, a passively-cooled card that out-performed the 8000 series cards that were passively cooled. I knew it had a “big” heatsink and cooling fans, but I wasn’t sure how big. I also knew the SD39P2, like all Shuttle XPCs, was “small” – but that’s a relative term and I couldn’t find out how much space there was on all sides of the PCI Express slot. So I took a leap of faith and ordered this card for $325 and when it arrived I tried to install it. It would not fit. The picture pretty much says it all:
The heat pipes connect to the radiator and it sticks out the back a good 2cm or so, making it impossible to put the case back on. So scratch that plan, it looks like I’ll be putting this 7950GT in my big tower and I’ll either put the ATI Radeon X1950 Pro in the Shuttle, or perhaps sell it on eBay and get a new 8000 series passively cooled card. And I’m still waiting for a new SD39P2 to come my way – this project is turning out to be a bit of a nightmare…
Cool Right-Click Options in Vista Games Section
I discovered something new about Vista today (I’m constantly discovering new things actually), and it was in the Games section of Vista. When you click on a game title, it will show you the required and recommended Windows Experience Index ratings for the game – we all knew that. What I had never seen before is that if you right-click on a game icon, you see a whole bunch of different options:
This is a great example of contest-sensitive user interface. You want to know where your saved games are for a certain game? Right click and it will open the right folder for you. Nicely done Microsoft!
Being Given a Second Chance to Help Someone
Several months ago, let’s say November, Ashley and I were driving home from church on a Sunday afternoon and I saw a woman pushing a cart full of garbage bags. She looked homeless, carrying her only possessions in the cart. I was very surprised to see her on the side road we were driving down at the edge of the city – most homeless people tend to stay downtown, close to the shelters. When I saw her my first instinct was to stop and help her somehow, to give her some money – but I immediately felt worried it would be awkward for me to stop my car, put it in reverse and get out and approach her. Not exactly a low key approach, now is it? As I kept driving down the road I wrestled with my conscience over this – and eventually ended up home a few minutes later. I confessed to Ashley that I wanted to help that lady, and that I was ashamed I hadn’t. She told me that the woman was more or less a “regular” down that road, that she saw her now and then going to and from work. I vowed that the next time I saw her I’d stop and do something to help. Months passed, and I never saw her again – and, in truth, I eventually forgot about her (to my shame).
On Monday night of this week, Ashley and I loaded up our car with five bags of cans and bottles for recycling – we always find it a bit of a hassle to drive down to the bottle recyling place, wait 10-20 minutes in line, and only get $30 for it. We recycle for environmental, not monetary reasons (like almost everyone I imagine), so we usually leave it until we’re tripping over garbage bags full of cans and bottles and have no choice. We always hope the local boy scouts will stop by on a Saturday so we can give them all of it, but they haven’t come around since last year. At any rate, we decided to drive to a bottle recycling station that was a bit further away, but more convenient to get to – and because it was new, we hoped there wouldn’t be any lines.
We arrived only five minutes before closing, and when I came in carrying three garbage bags I sighed in relief at seeing only one woman dropping off her cans because it meant we wouldn’t have to wait in line (Ashley and I have a problem being patient waiting in line you see). I opened up the bags and started to dump out the cans and bottles – as I was doing so I looked over at the women who had just dropped off her cans and was at the window waiting for her money. She was clearly homeless, and immediately I knew what to do – I walked over and asked her if she’d like to have all of our cans and bottles. She smiled and said “Yes, thank you so much” and I said “You’re welcome”. I finished emptying out the next bag and she came over to wait while they sorted through it. She thanked me again, and Ashley and I left.
As we were walking out to the car, Ashley said “Do you know who that lady was? She’s the one you passed on the road last year and wanted to help – and now you have.” I stopped dead and gave Ashley an incredulous look – what were the odds that we’d see her at that place, at that time five minutes before closing, on that day, at a bottle depot we’d never been to before? Stack those odds together and you end up with a very long shot. In that moment I knew it was a God thing, a designed moment in time. I have no illusions that us giving her a few bottles changed her life, but if a small act of kindness from a stranger made her day a little brighter, then it’s a step in the right direction.
Kelly Sweet Covering Aerosmith’s “Dream On”
Aerosmith was a favourite band from my youth, and one of their classic songs is “Dream On”. Imagine my surprise when I saw a young woman named Kelly Sweet covering it and doing a very good job – it’s her own interpretation of it of course, but I found it quite compelling. Her other music is also quite good. I’m a sucker for female vocalists, and when you factor in I’m also a fan of red-heads, well, let’s just say I’m a Kelly Sweet fan and plan on picking up her album quite soon.
Still No Printer Drivers for hp 2600n Colour Laser Printer
When I had to go out and buy ink for my Canon printer this week, it made me riled up about the fact that I can’t use the great 2600n printer I bought last year. Here’s a message I sent through to Mark Hurd, the CEO of HP (nice that they have a page from which to do this, even if his assistant is going to be reading it):
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Mr. Hurd,
Late last year I purchased an hp 2600n colour laser printer. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was with it – great price, amazing performance. I was extremely happy with my purchase. Today, on the 24th of April, I haven’t used that excellent printer in nearly four months. Why?
Vista. I upgraded all of my computers to Windows Vista in early January. I knew that Vista wasn’t officially being released until the end of January, so I wasn’t expecting an HP driver for the 2600n until then. I waited. And I waited. In the middle of February I was starting to wonder what was going on, and upon contacting tech support I was told that no driver for the 2600n would be ready until July 2007. My brand new printer is completely useless without a driver, and it’s taking the hp driver team nearly half a year after the launch of Vista to create a driver? Unacceptable.
I’ve since switched back to using my Canon MP780 printer since Canon was quick to release a Vista driver for it – and that includes all of the scanning and faxing functionality. Mr. Hurd, hp is the most prominent printer company on the planet, and I know the release of Windows Vista wasn’t a surprise for you or your team – so why weren’t there drivers ready at launch or shortly thereafter? Why are customers such as myself staring at brand new hardware, now useless, all for lack of a driver?
I’m deeply disappointed in this situation and will find it hard to buy another hp printer in the future knowing how low hp places the needs of customers such as myself.
Sincerely,
Jason R. Dunn
Email Breakdown – It’s Actually Happening
Has anyone else noticed that email over the past year has become more and more unreliable? We’ve been hearing the Chicken Little stories for years about how the Internet was going to crumble under the weight of spam, viruses, spyware, and other assorted junk. It hasn’t – if anything, it’s faster than ever for more and more people around the world – hardware improvements and infrastructure investments have made it more robust than ever. But somewhere along the way, something bad started to happen with email. I’ve seen estimates that as much as 90% of daily email is spam, and extremely sophisticated anti-spam systems have evolved over the years. Dedicated anti-spam servers with huge blacklists of bad IPs, smart Bayesian filters learning over time to become effective spam blockers, and all sorts of clever solutions for stemming the flow of spam. You’d think we’d be in better shape than ever, right? Wrong.
I do a great deal of daily email – sending, receiving, reading, deleting. I deal with countless people, coordinating news posts, dealing with vendors for reviews, emailing people regarding issues on Thoughts Media Inc. sites – including contests that we run. In the past six months, we’ve run some pretty big contests on the sites. And in the past six months, I’ve had more headaches over email than ever. The basic problem? Person “A” doesn’t get the email that person “B” sent – it’s not in their spam folder, it’s not in their deleted items; the email just never arrived. Person “C” is in the middle (that’s me), able to receive email from both people, but no matter how many emails are sent, no matter what the subject line of email content, person “A” and person “B” just can’t communicate. No error messages are generated, no bounces come back, the email is sent into a black hole never to emerge – somewhere there’s a “helpful” anti-spam server or software program that’s eating the email and leaving no trace. And poor person “A”, the person who won a great prize in a contest, has a hell of a time claiming it because they can’t communicate with the company!
As much as I love the open and free concept that the Internet is based on, email is badly broken. Any idiot can run an SMTP server, there’s no central authorization or control, and thus we have billions upon billions of spam messages sent every year. Email is dying, and no one has the guts to step up and fix it – sure, there have been proposals (Sender ID, etc.) to make things better, but ultimately none of them go anywhere because the repercussions will be so far-reaching. Some of the loudest voices are likely system admins who run their own small SMTP servers and don’t want to have any one company control the flow of email, and they don’t want to have to pay a fee to run an email server. I sympathize, but you know what? Things need to change – how email is sent needs to change.
All of the smart filtering in the world can’t fix the horrible mess that email has become today. The only solution I can see is to only allow authorized, known, registered, and paid for mail servers to send email. Registering your SMTP server should be easy, fast, and not expensive – anyone running an SMTP server should be willing to pay $20 a year (or some other low number) to send email, and it would put an end to the millions of compromised botnet computers out there sending spam without the knowledge of their owners.
Email is dying – who’s going to rescue it?
The Phone Call You Hate To Get
Other than a phone call telling you that a loved one has been hurt, I think getting a phone call saying “there’s been an accident, no one was hurt” is right up there on the list of phone calls you wish you’d never get. It’s 7:05 am right now and at about 6:40 am Ashley phoned me as she was on her way to the gym to tell me that she had hit a parked car. 🙁 She wasn’t hurt thankfully, and hit the other car doing about 40 KM/h – she said the damage was minimal, but we all know that means at least $1000 to repair each car, if not more. The weather here went crazy yesterday…
I was out last night at a music practice, and it was snowing but still semi-warm – but that meant a lot of condensation that wasn’t immediately freezing, just getting slushy. Driving home it was windy and getting colder, a sign of bad things to come. Before going to bed I commented to Ashley that the roads were going to be incredibly bad in the morning. She said she heard it wasn’t supposed to get that cold, but when we woke up this morning there was a good six inches of snow on the ground. Light fluffy snow doesn’t give you much traction, and when you have hard, frozen ice underneath it’s a recipie for disaster. And hence, the car accident. It’s hard for me not to get a little upset when I knew the roads were going to be horrible – it’s always the people that go out first thing in the morning that are the most vulnerable to the road because no cars before them have been cleared. I feel like I should have warned Ashley again. Or maybe I should have asked her not to go? Begone stupid voice of hindsight!
I’m relieved that Ashley wasn’t hurt (hopefully there’s no whiplash/neck damage), but I’m not looking forward to either paying a few thousand dollars out of my pocket, or claiming it through insurance and having those blood sucking leeches charge me many more thousands of dollars over a period of several years (I have a special, burning dislike of insurance companies). Here’s hoping the damage is less than I fear…
A Plea to Picasa
A message I sent to the Picasa team today…
Picasa is such an easy to use program, I install it on the computer of every friend and family member I have – it has allowed them to get more out of the digital pictures I send them. But, here’s the problem: there’s only ONE online print provider for all of us in Canada, and it’s an outfit out of the UK that, frankly, is completely terrible. I’ve been waiting and waiting for other Canadian printers to be added – Wal-Mart, Future Shop, London Drugs, ANYONE…but still nothing. It’s incredibly frustrating.
I think this may have been the biggest casualty from the Google acquisition: before when Picasa was a commercial product, I felt like the team was more open and interested in hearing from customers and making the product better. But now that it’s a free product, I sense much less inclination to make the product better for everyone: when I asked about getting more online photo printing options available in Canada, I was told that it was up to the photo printing companies to come to Google, not the other way around. That’s a shockingly bad attitude, and it comes from being part of Google – I think it’s very unfortunate.
Please, please: do more to make Picasa play nice with others even if you *are* the mighty Google. Get more print providers for Canada and other countries. Get some integration and functionality with providers like Smugmug…
Outlook 2007: Some Great Features, Some Great Frustrations
Generally speaking, I really enjoy using Outlook 2007. It’s a nice evolution from Outlook 2003, and in particular with the way they’ve combined tasks, categories, and flags, it’s now a much more powerful organizational tool. I’ve grown to like the kinda’ sorta’ Word 2007 module that loads when I’m writing email – the in-line spell-check and grammar-check is handy. Outlook 2007 is especially effective on wide-screen monitors because you’ll probably have the space to leave up the “To Do” bar, which consists of a single-month calendar view, your appointments for the day, and all your tasks. Given the type of business I run, and the type of person I am, you’d think that I’d be an enthusiastic user of tasks under Outlook. That hasn’t been the case until I started using Outlook 2007 – with Outlook 2003, tasks weren’t really tied to anything they were just stand-alone items that needed to be completed. With Outlook 2007, with a couple of clicks I can take an incoming email, flag it as a task, mark it with a category, and have it added to a nicely organized list that I can use to base my day around. Granted, I still don’t have enough personal discipline to do that very often, but at least I can’t blame the software any more. 🙂
Outlook 2007 isn’t problem-free though: start-up to using time is brutal, though I strongly suspect it’s due to the six IMAP accounts I have Outlook configured to check in addition to my hosted Exchange account. It checks for mail in all accounts all at once when it starts up, which is a messy and slow way of doing things – why don’t they do some sort of smart queueing? Another thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes URLs in email messages, when clicked, will generate the following Outlook error:
It seems to happen randomly with different URLs, and the URLs in question are definitely valid. The error is a strange one, because it refers to the URL as if it were a local resource (file) that couldn’t be located. I haven’t seen it often enough to nail down a pattern, but I think it may be related to the system load: if I open up Outlook 2007, while it’s churning hard I can click a link in an email and usually get this email. I think if it can’t load the URL in “x” seconds it will trigger this error. I’ve also seen this error in Vista outside of Outlook, so I’m thinking it has to do with Firefox not giving a response back to the URL request in “x” milliseconds – because the error won’t usually happen if Firefox is already open.