What was that they said?????.

I always go through my GMail spam and manually trash them, just in case something got put in there by accident. After all, artificial intelligence really isn't. (Intelligence that is. It's definitely artificial).



Sometimes they are good for laughs.



Like the one that I allegedly got from an Oregon credit union with a subject of "Correct you'r information". As if I'm going to join a credit union that can't use proper grammer.



And then I realize that some time that I don't remember that I must have gone to Oregon and joined a credit union out there.



C'mon scammers: at least learn proper grammer with your ill-gotten gains. There are dozens of English lessons that you can buy.

And you want this how?

I had to laugh. I got an obvious pfishing email. It reads (in full):

I have been directed to inform you that you have been chosen for a cash
grantof 1,000,000.00 POUNDS by the board of trustees of the above stated non- governmental aid organization UK INTERNATIONAL LOTT. Your grant number is 73/7112/EsD.
Contact Mr Ben Andrew

Please provide him with the under listed information,

1. Full Names.
2. Residential Address.
3. Phone Number.
4. Occupation.
5. Sex.
6. Age.
7. Nationality.
8. Present Country of residence

And exactly how is this scam going to work? There is absolutely no indication as to where to contact our dear Mister Ben Andrew, even if I had it in my heart to give away my personal information to a stranger. No links, nothing.

This is one for the D'oh awards.

Cannot find "managed coclass wrapper"?

I'm doing a little bit of office automation. I'm writing a C# program to automatically create a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation (actually it's more of a slide show).

I've got the PowerPoint interop library referenced and imported properly...

using Powerpoint = Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint;

and declared and instantiated the PowerPoint application as required...

Powerpoint.Application app = new Powerpoint.Application();

But Visual Studio 2008 seems on occasion to dislike this, and gives me an error on the line, saying:

The managed coclass wrapper class 'Dummy type name' for interface 'Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.Application' cannot be found (are you missing an assembly reference?)

But the thing compiles. The project builds. The solution builds. I can create the installer. The installer installs. It's apparently just the IDE that is as confused as I get when I watch an episode of "Lost".

So the issue apparently is that I'm trying to create a new instance of an interface. The interface happens to be marked with a [CoClass()] attribute, and the compiler is smart enough to know that it needs to create a dummy wrapper for the instantiation, but apparently VS2008 didn't read all of the memos. So my workaround is to change my code slightly and instantiate the actual implementation class pointed to by the interface...

Powerpoint.Application app = new Powerpoint.ApplicationClass();

And the thing compiles. The project builds. The solution builds. I can create the installer. The installer installs. And the IDE doesn't waste any CPU cycles telling me about a problem that doesn't really exist.

Browser Toolbars - NOT

Why does everyone have to jump on the browser toolbar bandwagon?

My computer just came up and notified me that there was a Java update available. That's wonderful. So I told it to go ahead and install it. And if I wasn't paying attention, I would have installed the MSN toolbar into Internet Explorer right along with installing the latest Java update.

And when AIM updates, it tries to install the AOL toolbar (and keeps trying to change my home page also).

And I also have to work to not get the Google toolbar installed. And the Yahoo toolbar. And the eBay toolbar.

I'm not saying that browser toolbars are bad. That would be like saying that software is bad. No, a useful toolbar is a performance enhancer. But I've seen browsers that have six or seven toolbars installed. And most of them had some similar if not identical features.

All I'm asking is this: Go ahead and offer the toolbar if you want. But DON'T install it by default. Remember that everyone else is trying to do the same thing.

Sure, when I'm updating AIM it's reasonable to have a chance to install the AOL toolbar. And to change my home page to aol.com. But give me credit for some intelligence and for wanting to have my browser set up the way I want it to be, not the way you do. Let me make the decision to do these things, instead of making the decision to not change them.

Let the status quo remain.

Please.

iGoogle? I don't know

Well, Google just messed up my long and carefully laid out iGoogle page. Apparently someone there in Google Labs doesn't have a very good concept of web page layout design. They just took my tabs from the top of the page and pushed them over to the left side.

Hey, I've got a lot of gadgets here that I'm using on a regular basis. I've got Gmail, and Reader, and Calendar, and Google Bookmarks. Oh, and I JUST found a real nice gadget that gives a Facebook summary (it's Facebook iPhone - I wish there was one of as good a quality for LinkedIn). On top of those, I've got the manditory weather, and "This Day in History" for fun, and the US eBird Sightings (since I'm an accidental birdwatcher).



Well, I've been using iGoogle as a nice dashboard for a long time. Almost no scrolling or anything. I had it the way I want it. I want to revert.

Well, I guess that Google labs have finally hit the big time. I thought only Microsoft put out enhanced software that was less user-friendly than the previous version.

Office 2007 - Act 5 - Outlook again

Well, I just got bitten by Microsoft Outlook. Well, actually, Microsoft Word.

We're working on a web site for consumers to be able to register for an offer. After registration, they are provided with a certificate number on what we refer to as the thank-you page, and also receive that certificate number in an email. The client has some pretty specific (and rather neat-looking, if you ignore the fact that it's red) background that looks like dirty parchment at the edges. Naturally, the email should have the same look. No problem. We've done it before.

But we didn't reckon on Office 2007. Apparently, Microsoft in their infinite wisdom has changed (or eliminated) the html rendering engine in Outlook 2007, and uses Microsoft Word to do the rendering. Well, there's a whole raft of options that have been removed from the rendering engine, including putting a "background-image: url(...)" into the stylesheet.

So we tried the alternate - background="..." on the body tag. Works fine.

But not in Outlook 2003. It doesn't render that. And 2007 won't render it either if there's a "background-image: url(...)" in the stylesheet, even if it is there.

So Microsoft has completely eliminated the option of putting a background on the body in html email that will render properly in its two most recent Office-based mail clients. Apparently you can still put backgrounds on table td elements, though.

It's enough to make you want to use Thunderbird (which handled all of the above situations, even the combinations, correctly, by the way).

You know, cross-email testing is way worse than cross-browser testing.

Can we get a PC designed for typing?

I used to have a Compaq laptop named Gleep. I thought it had the best-designed keyboard. The keyboard started right at the front of the laptop - I could position my hands on it just as though they were on a standard desktop keyboard. I didn't have to keep my palms raised for fear of moving the mouse cursor or of right-clicking or left-clicking.

When I was in college (many many many moons ago) I was the unofficial chief typesetter for the student paper, and became very close friends with an IBM Selectric Typesetter named HAL. HAL had wonderful touch and feedback. Gleep was a reasonable facsimile thereof.

I understand that a lot of people want laptops to be thinner and lighter. But a lot of companies (like the one I work for) are providing laptops to their employees as their primary computer. It's a great idea. My current laptop cuts the mustard in a lot of areas - plenty of ram, dual core, more than enough disk - but it's an absolute pain to type on. I bought a USB hub just so I can plug a mouse, keyboard, and docking station into it and still have a port or two free so that I can plug a thumb drive into it at the same time. I carry another mouse and mouse pad around in my laptop case.

Hey, let's start bugging the manufacturers to give us something useable as a keyboard. Compaq did it right with a lot of quality (though maybe that's why you don't see a Compaq computer any more). To hell with better EPA standards, let's lobby for decent laptop keyboards!