Banish Junk Mail from Your (snail) Mail Box [spamIRL]

Billions of spam email messages are sent each day, yet, most of us with web-based email accounts never see any, or most, of it thanks to the ever-evolving spam filter. If something does make it through, it’s just a couple clicks to banish the message to oblivion. Unfortunately, the original white meat, junk mail, trickles in every day. Whether you dislike the junk because you shudder to think about the wasted resource as you place another 10 pounds of junk in the recycle bin, or you simply don’t like having to deal with the endless ads and shredding of credit card offers, there’s a few ways you can try to clamp down on the trickle.

Learn how to opt-out of magazines, catalogs, direct mail, and credit card offers at spamIRL.com

Pandora Sidebar Gadget for Windows 7, Vista 64-bit

Pandora Internet Radio released the 1.0 version of their Windows Vista sidebar gadget which utilizes Adobe Flash Player to play your stations right from your Windows sidebar. Fortunately, the gadget also worked for Windows 7. The only problem, however, was that Adobe didn’t have a 64-bit version of their Flash player for Windows (uh, guys? It’s 2010 64-bit has been available to consumers for nearly 6 years). The only way to get the Pandora gadget to play in the sidebar for 64-bit systems was to force the system to start the 32-bit version of your sidebar (or gadget process for Win 7), through some registry change, or startup addition, so it’d use the 32-bit version Flash available.

Today, that all changes. Pandora’s old 1.0 gadget can now live on in the 64-bit world with Adobe’s release of Flash Player Square, the first 64-bit version of Adobe’s popular Flash Player. As I type this, I’m listening to my Pandora QuickMix from the Pandora gadget running on my 64-bit Windows 7 Professional machine!

Take note that the “Square” version of Flash is a preview of 64-bit Flash player and will not automatically update and may not function correctly in all cases.

Download: Pandora Sidebar Gadget for Windows 7 and Vista

Download: Adobe Flash Player 64-bit “Square”

[via Download Squad]

Razer Lycosa Keyboard Problem

A new use for those bottle caps lying around to keep track of your weekend drink count

The Razer Lycosa keyboard, a gamer favorite, sold since 2007, garnered some bad press a few years ago due to a few bad batches of keyboards which left them either severely crippled or, at least, very annoying to use. Some keyboards succumb to an issue where the backlight refuses to stay on, the backlight will erratically cycle through the its options or the media buttons won’t respond.

It was found, in some cases, that the touchpad was installed incorrectly at the factory, and opening the keyboard to re-seat the touchpad would fix the issue. A MacGyver fix was found; when a dime or quarter is placed on the touch-sensitive media control area, the cycling ceased.

When I first applied this fix a couple years ago, I had no change available, but I did have a bottle cap which worked just fine! Doing this renders the touchpad useless, but it does prevent the backlight from cycling. After a few months of the bottle cap being in place, I removed it and went for about a year without any issues. Just recently, however, the problem return, and I happened to have another bottle cap at the ready!

Unable to Select Shut Down or Restart

You go to shutdown your Windows XP computer only to find you’re not given the option. The only option available to you is log off. The same behavior is experienced when logged in as either a local or domain administrator. What’s up? Well, it could be that your local security settings are set (on purpose) to disallow this behavior. If you’re looking at this thinking, “Hey, I am the administrator and this isn’t what I wanted!” You might simply have a corrupt security policy. Run a gpupdate at the command prompt to download a new copy. If that’s no bueno, check our your local security settings (hint: secpol.msc) to make sure nothing funny is in there.

A network administrator at my work came across this issue and was denied access to change a “disallow” shutdown setting in local security settings even logged in as thedomain admin, local admin, safe mode, whatever. It turns out something in the local security settings had become corrupt and a gpupdate command didn’t do a thing. The final solution? A neat little command that resets the security settings to default. Why the network admin was able to do a reset and not change a setting, who knows, but I hope it can help you:

Note: This procedure may remove users from any local security groups, so be sure to take note of all the users in those groups.

1. At command prompt, run: secedit /configure /cfg %windir\repair\secsetup.inf /db /secsetup.sdb /verbose
2. Reboot computer

Local security settings should be reset default now and will download the correct settings from the domain.

(CC-licensed image by cosmocatalano)

Unstoppable Cell Selection in Microsoft Excel

In Excel, moving the mouse anywhere on the screen will result in selecting all cells the mouse passes over. Excel does not respond to the right or left-click and can only be closed forcibly. In other words, the mouse cursor behaves as if the left-click is being pressed while in Excel causing it to do nothing but select cells indefinitely.

I believe this issue to primarily be a conflict with the Novell GroupWise Office integration (ODMA) for Microsoft Office. Secondarily, it may be an issue with the mouse driver.

Resolution:

1. In GroupWise, turn off or uninstall integrations (who likes them anyway?)
2. Search the computer and remove any instances of GWxl97.xla or GWXLUS.XLA.
3. In Excel, reset the Worksheet Menu Bar by going to View > Toolbars > Customize > Toolbars… then select “Worksheet Menu Bar” and hit Reset… This screen also shows a “Standard” toolbar which sometimes must also be reset.
4. Reboot.
5. If the issue persists, remove the mouse driver, reboot, and allow Windows to install a generic driver.
6. If the issue still persists, remove the mouse driver, install the driver specific to the mouse and reboot.
7. If the issue persists, then it’s not an issue with GroupWise integrations or your mouse driver. Good luck!

Students: $30 Upgrade to Windows 7 Home Ultimate or Professional

Looking for a cheap, legitimate, almost free Windows 7 copy? Microsoft is offering Windows 7 Home Ultimate or Windows 7 Professional (32 and 64-bit versions) for $30 to college students with a valid .edu email address. Head on over to the order page, enter your email address and get in your pre-order! For the record, Windows 7 upgrades retail for $200. Take note: If you want the Professional version, click the link that says “Need to join your school’s network domain? Click here”. Since its the same price, I recommend getting the professional version since there are more usable features than Home, and less useless features than those contained in Ultimate.

Windows 7 will be available for download on October 22; those who pre-order will be sent a reminder email with the download link on that day.

The offer is good until January 3, 2010. Check out the table below to see what kind of upgrade experience you’ll be looking at. Keep in mind, though, if you purchase an upgrade instead of a full retail version, you need to keep the  discs and keys for the OS you’re upgrading. If you ever need/want to reinstall Win 7, you’ll need those things.

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart

Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language: The Comic [xkcd: volume 0]

xkcd:volume 0 - Cover

The first comic book from Randall Monroe, the genius behind the xkcd web comic is available for purchase! xkcd:volume 0 features 600 comics, selected by Monroe, and include fan and author favorites. Obviously, owning a book of a widely distributed, freely-available web comic is merely for the novelty of the tangibility of a comic book, however, the comics in the book have been assembled from high-resolution scans of the original artwork, and include author notes, doodles, and puzzles in the margins of the book, adding a personal touch to the comics not available online (yet, I’m sure).

A popular feature of the xkcd web comic is the alt (aka, tooltip or mouseover) text, the text a user sees when he/she hovers or an image. The alt text usually contains an afterthought of the comic, or some additional insight. Because of the non-interactive nature of a book (crazy talk, I know), the alt text has been included with each comic in appealing fashion

The book is being published by Breadpig and a portion of the publishers profits will go to the Room to Read charity to help build a school in Laos.

I’ll post again when I receive my copy!

xkcd: volume 0 - Comic and Author Notes

xkcd: volume 0 - Comic and Author Notes

xkcd: volume 0 - Back Cover