Computers

iCloud vs. Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7

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

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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MobileMe still doesn’t support Outlook reminders

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

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.

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.

Save /admin /console setting in RDP

When using Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to remote computers, you can force the option to connect to the console session by using the /admin switch (or /console switch if you run older versions of the terminal services client.)

You used to be able to use the setting:

to save the option in an RDP file. This stopped working in the latest version of the RDP client (version 6.1).

After doing a lot of research (I don’t know why Microsoft doesn’t just list the current available options for RDP saved sessions!) I finally found out how to save this option in the current version of the RDP client from this obscure posting.

To save the “connect to console” setting — essentially forcing the “/admin” switch, put this line in your RDP file:

Dell PowerEdge 1750 – Press F1 to Continue

We had a Dell PowerEdge 1750 that, every time it was rebooted, would stop in the BIOS bootup sequence and prompt you to “Press F1 to Continue, Press F2 for Setup.” This was a huge problem because it made remote rebooting the server impossible. More than once, I forgot and rebooted the server assuming it would come back up, then realized 30 minutes later that it was never coming back until I mashed that F1 key. This was particularly problematic when working from home — resulting in a 30 mile drive just to press one key.

It turns out there was a small problem that was severe enough to prevent the server from booting. During the BIOS sequence, there was a notice we had overlooked that read “CD-ROM not found.” Once we pulled the bad CD-ROM drive and replaced it with a good one, the message went away and the server booted without interaction.

Since the CD-ROM isn’t necessary for booting, it seemed odd that a missing (or bad) CD-ROM drive would prevent the server from starting up without keyboard interaction. Sounds like a flaw in the BIOS to me.

Integrating WP in external PHP pages

I have several external pages that use the WP theme engine to wrap the content. I use the method found here, which worked great under WordPress 2.9.2. After upgrading to WP 3.0, these pages no longer worked as expected but instead generated 404s; it turns out the fix is rather simple.

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WordPress Can Guide Missiles?

This is just so funny!

http://www.viper007bond.com/2010/06/12/so-apparently-wordpress-can-guide-missiles/