When you add an IMAP account to Outlook 2007, you add a second account next to Personal Folders.  While there is, unfortunately, no way to replace the Personal Folders with this IMAP account, you can configure Outlook to start in the IMAP account’s Inbox as opposed to the Personal Folders Inbox.  To do so, follow these simple steps:

* Click on the Tools menu, then choose Options.
* Click on the Other tab, then choose Advanced Options.
* Under General Settings, next to the “Startup in this folder” box, click Browse.
* In the “Select Folder” dialog box, select the IMAP Inbox folder.
* Click OK to close the Select Folder window, click OK to close the Advanced Options window,  then click OK to close the Options window.

Post tags: IMAP, Outlook 2007

FREE MARKET THEORY, while very effective at allocating private goods and services, was never intended to be applied in the public sector. The United States of America is arguably the greatest example of the privatized economic model, in which free market theory is applied as strictly as possible. Even here, privatization of public services, such as the military, results in disaster, such as the Blackwater controversies.

Post tags: Blackwater, free market

Click on the following link to download the plugin: guilty conscience

**NOTE: Original credit for this plugin concept goes to Matt at Automattic**

**ALSO NOTE: Eminem, in case you live under a rock and have never heard of him, is known for using profanity and alarming subject matters in his music. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.**

Post tags: eminem, hello dolly, plugin, WordPress

Eliminating the federal gas tax, about 18 cents a gallon, would encourage more driving (create MORE demand), putting added pressure on supplies, and driving the underlying price of gasoline higher. Making gas cheaper will also serve to postpone progress toward developing alternative ways of fueling cars, as such prolonging our addiction to oil.

Furthermore, since gasoline taxes are directly used to pay for rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges, this is probably not a good time to do away with them, considering the fact that bridges are falling down in places like Minnesota and California.

There is only one way to bring down the price of gas: we have to find a different way to power our cars, trucks, planes, trains and boats. As long as there are 250 million cars on the road in the US, the cost of gas will only continue to rise with each passing year.

Don’t be fooled by the “Gas Tax Holiday” gimmick, or any of the other bullshit John McCain is trying to sell you. There is no real political solution to a complex scientific problem. We need to move forward with electric cars and nuclear energy.

Post tags: gas-tax holiday, McCain

Post tags: Citrix, SharePoint

Yesterday I was sent up to resolve a problem for the Executive VP, something with Lotus Notes is what I was told.  When I get upstairs, his secretary and Executive Assistant are franitcally huddled around the boss’ PC, tapping keys and clicking the mouse trying to fix the issue.

Somehow, the VP locked his PC into a mode where using the directional keys in a new memo (up, down, left, right) moved the entire message up/down/left/right, rather than moving the cursor.  I looked at the symptoms for a moment, then the lightbulb clicked on in my brain.  I got a big smile on my face and pressed the Scroll Lock key, then *BANG* it worked like normal.

Talk about brownie points with the big guy, eh?  I love my job.

Post tags: IBM, work

But alas, the web changes and I have no reproach, save adapting to the change.  Firefox 3 Beta 5 was released in the Ubuntu repositories yesterday.  As I opened the browser, I was greeted with a nice notification that my beloved plugin, AdBlock Plus, was not compatible with the version of Firefox I was running.

So here I am, trying to enjoy my Sunday morning and I am being continuously bomabarded with graphic diarrhea.  Here’s to hoping the developers of that plugin are hard at work trying to update the most valuable addition to web browsing since the google.

Post tags: Google, Ubuntu

The issue:  The user’s desktop was white with an error message in the top right corner reading “blah blah blah, Active Desktop Recovery blah blah blah.”  There is a button that says something like “Click here to restore, but when you click it, you get another error message - but you shouldn’t be surprised given the fact that we’re talking about Microsoft here.  There are a few ways to fix this, but depending on how security is setup in your network, you may not be able to try all three options.

1. Right-click on the desktop, click properties.  On the themes tab, change your theme to something else and click apply - this should change the theme and remove the error message.  After you apply the change, you can switch back to your original theme.
2. Navigate to the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer folder.  Click on Tools, the Options, then click the view tab.  Uncheck the box for “Hide protected Operating System Files” and hit OK.  You should now see a file in that folder called desktop.htt - delete this file and reboot your PC.  Problem solved.
3. Click on Start, then run, type in regedit and hit enter.  Expand the HKEY_CurrentUser tree and navigate to the following key: Software\Microsoft\InternetExplorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components\DeskHTMLVersion and change the dword value from 110 to 0. Close regedit and reboot. Problem solved.

If you have problems with this fix, let me know and I will do my best to assist.

Post tags: Windows, work

If you have already registered for my site, you probably won’t notice the difference, but thought I’d post an update in the spirit of full disclosure.

Post tags: WordPress

For example, I started this blog with a clear mission, consisting of two key objectives. First, to setup a personal website and second to discuss the methods I use to build my site. The first task I aimed to tackle was integrating ZenPhoto into WordPress. I was able to do so and was pleased with the look I achieved after hours of CSS tweaking. All was well, or so I thought.

Once my site was looking and acting how I wanted it to, I decided to check out Google stats and see what issues I had to deal with in my sitemap. The biggest problem was that Google couldnt index my ZenPhoto installation. WordPress was kicking back 404 errors when crawling my site, since WordPress was unaware of the ZenPhoto installation running beneath it.

Another issue that bothered me was the search function. There was simply no feasible way to integrate the WordPress search with the ZenPoto installation. Even though I installed both in the same database, the search query could not return the values I needed within the WordPress loop.

The final issue I had with my ZenPhoto-WordPress mashup was that the comments, users, tags etc were all independent of the WordPress installation as well. After an immense amount of searching, I came to the conclusion that ZenPhoto and WordPress were not a match made in heaven after all. Also in that search, I determined that my next endeavor towards WordPress photo gallery awesomeness would have to be plugin based.

Post tags: photo management, WordPress, ZenPhoto