John H. Mutchek V

Office 2003 Files Do Not Appear on Vista’s "Recent Items" List

jmutchek — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 02:40:11 +0000

I have not completely tracked down the culprit here, but if I have seen this behavior, chances are somebody else has (or will) too. When I double-click on an old .doc or .xls file and open it in Office 2007, a shortcut to the file does not appear in Vista’s “recent items” list off of the start menu. New (or converted) .docx or .xlsx files opened in a similar way do appear in the list.

Further investigation revealed that the shortcuts to the .doc and .xls files were indeed being added to the %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent folder… they just weren’t being displayed in the UI. Strange.

The machine has Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Professional, but I have another machine with (what I think is) the exact same configuration that does not exhibit this behavior.

Having not found a solution, I’ve settled for a workaround; convert old Office 2003 files to 2007’s open XML file formats. There are a host of other reasons to do this anyway, so it’s not a difficult pill to swallow.

Does Vista Sleepwalk?

jmutchek — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:00:11 +0000

I’ve been running Vista on two Dells pretty much since its retail release. Overall, I have been very (very) pleased with the upgrade. Power management is much improved and the quick wake-time from a hybrid sleep has allowed me to be a bit more aggressive about how quickly I let my machine go to sleep. Sleep mode keeps the power bills down and the rooms a bit cooler in the summer.

I’ve noticed that the machines wake up from time to time and I haven’t been able to put my finger on the cause. It’s never been a big deal, just a bit annoying. Maybe it’s a USB device not behaving properly. Maybe something to do with updates (can Vista do that?) Well, this morning I heard my rig wake “sleepwalking” and decided that I should probably figure out what was causing it. (It’s more than a bit creepy to have your machine wake up in a dark room with no corporeal being at the keyboard).
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TechEd 2007

jmutchek — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:11:54 +0000

Microsoft’s TechEd conference this year was every bit as good as it has been for the past few years. This was my sixth TechEd in 8 years and I’m already looking forward to 2008. The week in Orlando was a whirlwind: a firestorm of products, solutions, patterns, and partners. Way too much good content for a blog post, but here are some items that caught my attention.
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Conquest of the Empire

jmutchek — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 02:02:04 +0000

In 1984, Milton Bradley released the MB GameMaster Series game “Conquest of the Empire”. It probably wasn’t long after it’s release that I got my copy and it’s been with me ever since. Until this past Father’s Day I hadn’t had a chance to play for many years, but it didn’t take long to remember how much I enjoyed it. Of course, it is pretty universally agreed that the rules published with the game had a few flaws, so over the years we have established our own set of house rules - now documented here for posterity.
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Merge PDFs with pdftk and MSH

jmutchek — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 02:44:01 +0000

When scanning a stack of multi-page documents to PDF, I find it easier to scan each page individually, then combine them in a post-processing step. Here’s a simple Monad script that merges multiple PDFs into a single multi-page document.
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Tint: A Windows Screensaver

jmutchek — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:37:35 +0000

Here’s a simple screensaver I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Tested on Windows XP SP2, the saver gradually dims your desktop. From descriptions I have read, it is probably similar to a MacOS X screensaver that’s pretty popular. The target tint (transparency) and the time (in seconds) it takes to get there are configurable. Unless you choose 0% target tint, the end result is the ability to see activity on your desktop without deactivating the screensaver.

This obviously doesn’t do a great job protecting a CRT from burn-in, but it’s a nice way to crank the brightness on an LCD down while you are away from your computer.
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Linksys WRT54G and Norton Internet Security

jmutchek — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 22:33:53 +0000

This is strange but… it would seem that Norton Internet Security can interfere with the configuration web page(s) on the Linksys WRT54G . And when I say interfere, I mean “render inoperable”.

I discovered this while walking through a wireless setup with my brother-in-law over the phone. He’s a saavy user, so I knew that something was awry when he told me that parts of the web page (specifically in the wireless settings areas) were just not rendering. That’s right. “Parts.” After a bit of head-scratching we disabled Norton Internet Security and the router config screens displaying perfectly.

Not sure if this was a fluke, but it was unlike any problem I’ve encountered previously.

Download podcasts with MSH (Monad)

jmutchek — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 01:25:25 +0000

One of my (many) resolutions for 2006 is to adopt the new Microsoft Shell (MSH) into my daily routine. For me, the first steps down that road are language fundamentals (thank you Andy Oakley) and teaching myself to identify tasks that would be better done from the shell. I’ll post bits of scripts as I start using them day to day.

This first script downloads RSS enclosures to a local directory for future consumption. I don’t have a portable MP3 player, so I burn podcasts to a CD-RW and listen to them on my commute. As such, I don’t have a need for a podcast aggregator with many bells or whistles. Instead, I have a scheduled task on my Media Center PC that runs this script each night.

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New Blog Format

jmutchek — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:30:14 +0000

After years of hand-crafted web pages and custom templating systems, I’m adopting a basic blog format for this space. This site has been generated by a semi-custom templating/publishing engine that just became too cumbersome to maintain. Of course, when I wrote the engine, blogging had not yet come into its own… and publishing & content management systems were too expensive and burdensome for a personal web site. But today, a growing selection of blogging engines have changed all of that.

So, as of today, “This site powered by WordPress.”

Vonajé 0.3

jmutchek — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 14:41:10 +0000

Vonajé is a simple Java API that gives you programmatic access your Vonage account information, including voicemails. 0.3 includes experimental support for the Canadian Vonage service. Vonajé’s primary use today is in Marty Lamb’s TiVonage - an extension for TiVo that makes it easy to check your Vonage voicemail through your TV.
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