I just installed and am almost using TrueCrypt 5.1 on my laptop. Highly recommended. I have it on my work laptop as well. I say almost, because it stopped at 95.229% into encrypting with a data error (CRC). It will not proceed past this so I'm only mostly encrypted. Needless to say, I'm a bit worried about this, but I plan on trying out SpinRite. I'll report on that in the future.

[Update: Worked well enough to fix that problem but I'm not totally satisfied with it.]

Just uninstalled Windows Live Photo Gallery. Patches, failed patches, reliance on SQL Server compact edition and hanging wlxquicktimecontrolhost.exe and limited usefulness meant it just wasn't even good enough to ignore. Ouch.

I noticed this problem while downloading sessions from the mix08 site (visitmix.com) in iPod format so I can play them on my iPhone.

One of the sessions I watched was on the history of the ribbon (UX09). I've blasted the ribbon in the past, and I still don't like it, but after watching that session and considering the problem they were trying to solve, I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed with the level of thought that went into it.

My wife and boy are out of town for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd give the bus a try. Why now? So I can have a vehicle that I leave at home and another that I leave at work. I really have to have a vehicle available at work in case I need to get to a client site, although I could probably get away with a nano car like the Smart.

Phoenix has a pretty nice public transportation site (http://valleymetro.org) which includes a trip planner. Unfortunately, the way the schedules work out, I have a fair chance of missing my connection and if I do, it will be a half an hour before the next bus. Actually, Monday it was 45 minutes! Grrr.

What would make the bus workable would be:

• a spare car I could leave at work
• enough busses to where I don't have to time my trip - one every fifteen minutes would do.
• all stops lit and covered for shade and rain
• if I organized my stuff so I could work on either my work laptop or my personal one for anything so I wouldn't have to lug either one around but I could still reach across to get stuff off of either one

What would make the bus cool would be:

• an easier payment system, like a card that is connected to a credit card - the new all day card is nice, but having to pay $2.50 in cash is kinda clumsy. At minimum, $5 cash should get you an all day and another all day card that can be spent later.
• a way to associate a preferred route into your card which will automatically signal for stop - probably difficult to make this foolproof, but having it there mainly to prevent you from forgetting and overshooting your destination.
• a way to text you ahead of time if there are problems with your route.
• walk tunnels or bridges at connectioning points
• real time bus location

I can't believe a type cool on the same line as bus. Al Gore should give me a ride for that.

• The big one is Visual Studio 2008. It has been released including Express Editions. You definitely want to check this out at msdn.com/express.
• Also, for you math heads out there, check out the new Word 2007 add-in, "Microsoft Math". Get it at download.microsoft.com - search for officemath.
• For all you who have lamented about having to fill the same forms over and over at the doctor's office, check out HealthVault (healthvault.com). It is a platform for holding personal information (like the usual stuff you fill out on those forms) and holding ongoing data (like blood glucose levels synced from compatible monitors). You can choose what data to share with whom, for example, you can share your heart rate data to your exercise group or family to show your progress.
• For the bean counters, there's Office Accounting 2008, including an Express edition. This new version includes online banking service integration. If you're running or thinking about Intuit's Quikbooks, check this out at office.microsoft.com/accounting.
• Search Server 2008 now includes an Express edition. This gives you web search of your web and disk content. The release candidate is available at microsoft.com/enterprisesearch
• SQL Server 2008 November CTP - microsoft.com/sql

I normally scoff at blogs that are nothing but repeaters for Microsoft's marketing department, so I've tried to keep the descriptions unhyped. Additionally, these are all things I will be working with in the near future, so expect to see more information related to these soon.

Okay, there are many things I like about Office 12. There are many things I'm not so crazy about. The ribbon is chief among them.

"But you'll get used to it." Really, how far beyond a year straight will it take?

To me, it suffers from the same bummer as personalized menus do… location isn't consistent.

Look below. Okay, pretend I'm John Scherer and I'm trying to tell you where to find "Insert Category". The ribbon is okay, but geez, did you have to take away the menu bar? the old school toolbar? I feel marched.

"But it's more discoverable!" Or is it? I cannot rollover to see what's under "insert" or "add-ins" or "paste", "spelling", "publish" or styles past #11.

Cannot customize it without writing code? Are you kidding me?

Seriously, was backwards compatibility that much of a burden? You kept Lotus slash commands and help for WordPerfect users for umpteen years but you won't keep _the_ way from v.Last?

"But we've maintained keyboard shortcut compatibility for you experts." Uh, no. Alt+F,V doesn't give me print preview, Alt+O, enter doesn't get my font dialog. I gave up after that.

"But it's worth it because it automatically switches ribbons to show you commands related to your action" - so, the UI becomes unpredictable... tell me, what was so horrible about the little floating on-demand toolbars?

Please Microsoft, admit failure and bring back the pdm.

There are several companies selling what looks like the old ui on the ribbon, like this one that I'm trying out now (http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer/index.php) but I cannot do rollover exploration of the menus in it and it doesn't fix the keyboard shortcuts - Alt+F doesn't show me the Classic UI File menu. Doesn't look like it can be drag-drop customized or support mounting / docking toolbars.

Beyond the ribbon, context sensitive help seems to be totally broken. If you can't do context sensitive help, well, fine. Google, I'm feeling lucky.

Those are my biggest gripes.

Well, after much procrastination, I finally spent some quality time with the GoDaddy hosting control center and various dasBlog instructions and got it working.

For anyone trying the same...

1. From GoDaddy, go to "My Hosting Account".
2. Click the [open] link under "Control Panel" for the domain.
3. Under settings, select ASP.NET runtime and make sure it's 2.0.
4. Under settings, check FrontPage extensions and make sure they are NOT installed.
5. Select "Directory Management" under "Content".
6. Create a custom directory where you'll host the blog with "Read", "Web" and "Set Root".
7. Create the subdirectories SiteConfig and logs and give them each read+write access.
8. Create another one called content and give it read+write+web access.
9. Download the dasBlog webfiles zip and extract it locally.
10. Edit your siteconfig/site.config setting the obvious looking stuff.
11. Edit your /web.config to get rid of or comment out the line
    <trust level="Medium" originUrl="" /> (a GoDaddy-ism)
12. Copy all the extracted files to your blog directory (using explorer view on ftp:// works)
13. Point your browser at your blog.
14. Sign in using "admin", "admin" (unless you changed the user name in SiteConfig/siteSecurity.config before you uploaded it)
15. Immediately change that password.

** Disclaimer: I didn't try those steps exactly so they may not be entirely perfect. **

Edit: Okay, I just setup another blog using those instructions and they seemed to work nicely.

Look here for more help on this.

http://www.aakashjain.com/How+To+Setup+DasBlog+On+Godaddy.aspx

Now, to blog from Word 2007 with images… create from the blog post template, set up an account of type "Other" and set the Url to http://domain/blogdir/blogger.aspx, set the picture option to "my blog provider". Publish! It should automatically upload pictures to /content/binary/.

Okay, so what is freachable? It is purgatory for .NET objects with finalizers. During garbage collection, objects that have finalizers need to have their finalizers run, but the GC shouldn't have to wait for them (after all the entire process is stalled while GC runs and finalizer code could affect what the GC is doing), but if there are no references to keep the object alive, it will get collected so the object is made to reachable by the finalizer thread by placing it in its special queue called freachable. GC completes and the finalizer thread wakes up, executes the finalizers in the freachable queue, and clears the queue entry, which is the last remaining reference to the object and now the next time GC runs, the object's memory will be reclaimed.

Read all about GC at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/1100/gci/

According to that article, it is pronounced f-reachable. That just sounds l-ame.

So what's the point of this blog? To blog stuff I figure out. I will try not to waste bandwidth on "hey, go read what this other guy figured out". Okay, so most of this post is stuff that someone else figured out, but the web.config mod on dasBlog was not in Aakash's notes.