Simmons Consulting

Dear Google Reader …

20
Nov

Please, please, please stop messing with your stylesheets. You keep changing your BIG honking

CRAYOLA®-mode

stylesheet and it’s breaking my extension that turns it into something that is actually readable.

Thanks.

iCloud vs. Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7

13
Nov

I have been using MobileMe since Apple started the service to keep my contacts and calendar in sync across all of my devices wirelessly. Except for a few hiccups early on, it has been a great solution to keep all of my information with me all of the time — on my iPhone, iPad, Windows 7 PC and a Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard (10.6.8.)

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PuTTY Tray: Redux — 0.61

30
Jul

Updated 2011-11-10: There is a new version with added features/bugfixes! PuTTY Tray (or PuTTYtray) is an unofficial branch of PuTTY, the terminal program. It builds on an already excellent application adding many features that (at least for me) make significant improvements including the ability to minimize the application to the system tray and turn URLs into clickable links within the terminal window.

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Limit of 32,000 bytes? Really?

06
May

I cannot believe we have purchased a product based on a database that has a 32,000-byte limit on fields returned using their own ODBC driver!

Welcome to 1984. Wow.

Update: This limit also applies to their .NET driver.

MobileMe still doesn’t support Outlook reminders

02
May

Apple’s MobileMe is a great idea. It has been the only real answer to keeping contacts and calendars synced across multiple Apple devices (iPhone, iPad) and multiple computers using both Windows and OS X. Despite a rocky start (see this article) the service has gradually become better and better. But a problem developed for Outlook users when Apple moved to a new calendar format. The upgraded calendar no longer synchronizes your local Outlook calendar with the MobileMe remote calendar (including your alerts/reminders) — instead you get a second, external CalDAV calendar linked in Outlook and stored “in the cloud,” separate and distinct from your local Outlook calendar.

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Clear Outlook 2010 contact MRU

11
Mar

It took a while to find this answer. To clear the Outlook 2010 contact search drop down (what used to be called the QuickMRU in earlier versions of Outlook) you have to go to this registry key.

  1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\profile_name\0a0d020000000000c000000000000046\101f0446

You can edit it or delete it, but it is a binary type so it appears to store the information in Unicode.

I found the answer here.

Why it costs so much

14
Dec

If a client asks “Why do you charge so much for X hours of work?” simply tell them “You are paying me for the X hours of work and the 35,000 hours it took to learn how to do your project in X hours.”

New website launched!

10
Dec

A large ecommerce project of mine recently launched. The site is called Ridge City Media and they offer disc repair services, for CDs, DVDs and game console discs. If you have scratched or unworking discs, CDs that skip or won’t play, check out their site for excellent disc repair.