HP unveils small laptop for schoolkids - Yahoo! News
Another entry in the UMPC/Netbook/Cloodbook/eeePC game!
Free tools for Non-Profits from Google
In addition to the regular collection of free Google apps, non-profits can use Google Checkout for donations and apply for a Google Grant for free advertising with AdWords.
If you’re a non-profit check it out!
UnitedHealthCare settlement check
I received my “final payment” from the class action lawsuit today for a whopping $8.06!
I promise not to spend it all in one place…
Add a Send To for Sysinternals Contig
One of my favorite tools is Sysinternals’ (Microsoft) Contig commandline utility to make files contiguous. However, it’s a pain having to type the full path to the file or directory you want to contig, so I fooled around until I came up with these two tricks:
To create a Send To item that will contig a single file navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\your username\SendTo, right click & select New, Shortcut and use the wizard to locate the full path to contig.exe.
After you’ve finished, right click the shortcut and rename it to something that makes sense to you - I used “Contig File”. Right click on the shortcut again, select Properties and in the Target box add a space and “%cd%”\. It’ll windup looking something like c:\sysinternals\contig “%cd%”\. Click Apply and OK. Now you can right click on any file in Explorer and a DOS window will open up and Contig will contig your file and close the DOS window.
To create a Send To item that will contig a directory recursively follow the same steps above (copy and rename the Contig File shortcut) except change the Target line to space -s space “%cd%”\ so it looks like c:\sysinternals\contig -s “%cd%”\.
The trick here is using “%cd%”. %cd% is the full path to the current working directory where the file (or directory) you want to contig is located. The “” convert the Long File Name from the %cd% into something DOS understands.
Enjoy!
David Esrati may have “lost” in OH-3, but “we” won!
Almost 11,000 of us liked what we heard from David more than the other two candidates. That’s a significant number of people who are not satisfied with the way they’re being represented in Washington.
Hopefully, this will serve as a wakeup call to the Democratic Party and the “winner” that quite a few of us are ready for a change. And maybe inspire someone else, who’s not a political insider, to get involved.
So yes, David lost, but we won!
Announcing Esrati for Congress at Esrati for Congress
Announcing Esrati for Congress at Esrati for Congress
Yes, this is old news now, but worth a reminder if you’re in the 3rd Congressional District in Ohio. Esrati.com is the place to go for the latest information.
Portable / USB Apps Links
Like a lot of people, I like to carry around a collection of apps on my thumb drive. But, sometimes I forget to bring it or don’t have an available USB port to work with. In any case, here’s a list of a few sites that have Portable Apps:
- http://www.portablefreeware.com/
- http://portableapps.com/
- http://tinyapps.org/
- http://www.dailycupoftech.com/usb-drive-systems/
Tell me about others in the comments.
Averatec 3200 shuts down without warning
I had an Averatec 3250H1-01 that shutdown after a few minutes running. Sometimes it would last long enough to get into Windows & other times it would barely make through the BIOS self-test.
I immediately suspected a power supply/battery problem, since that was the original issue. But, after a little thought, I decided to see if the real problem was overheating. After pulling off the CPU cover & removing the heatsink, I was amazed to see that there was almost no heatsink compound left and what there was of it had become hardened & crusty.
After a little isopropyl alcohol & cotton swab action to clean off the old junk, some fresh ArcticSilver and I was back in business!
We sent you an email last year. Why didn’t you read it?
A client of mine uses a catalog service from someone else. The catalog guys changed the format of the link slightly & sent out an email to all their customers at the end of last year. Apparently, my client didn’t see the email so, for the last 9 months, all of their customers have been going to the wrong catalog.
My client happens to notice something’s wrong and emails Customer (Dis)Service. Instead of simply replying with the correct link, Customer (Dis)Service responds with a slightly chastising “we sent you an email last year” and an unclear explanation of what the correct link should be. Not content with just confusing someone who’s not HTML literate, they implied that part of the link had been changed to include a customer code like “XXXX”, and then didn’t supply the code.
My gripe? Answer the customer’s question completely the first time and save everyone time and money! But more importantly, if you’re sharp enough to write an online catalog app you’ve got to be smart enough to write a one-liner that makes sure all your customers changed their links and another one-liner to email those that didn’t.