Example for CW Lee
The Open dialog box in Word 2007:
Trillian Hijacks Ctrl+Shift+A and two other shortcuts
All of a sudden, Ctrl+Shift+A stopped working in Outlook and Windows Mail. In Outlook, I used it to create a new appointment, and I use it in Windows Mail to mark all messages in the displayed newsgroup as Read.
Long story short: It was Trillian, which I recently started using, albeit sporadically. Until yesterday, apparently, I had not tried using Ctrl+Shift+A while Trillian was running.
Trillian was reserving, but not using, three keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+I, Ctrl+Shift+A and Ctrl+Alt+C. Reclaiming them for your own purposes is a two step process. First, the delete them from Trillian’s Advanced Preferences. Then, you close and restart Trillian.
Right-click Trillian in the system tray, and choose Trillian Preferences. Click on Advanced Preferences. In the left pane, click on Automation. Under Automation, scroll down until you see the first reserved keyboard shortcut. Click on it, and Change… and X (delete) options appear. Click the red X, and poof! Remove any other offenders in the same way, then close the Preferences box, and close and restart Trillian. Those keyboard shortcuts will no longer be hijacked.
Another problem solved, but I don’t know why
When trying to visit Microsoft’s connect.microsoft.com site earlier today, I was consistently getting the error message:
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
This was using IE8. Firefox and Opera both worked fine, so I was a bit perplexed. My impetus for using IE8 (I use Firefox whenever possible) was that a destination site was not working properly. So, I decided to try IE8 to see if it would work correctly. Ultimately, it did, verifying my guess that IE8 isn’t fully disposable quite yet. Along the way, however, I was hitting the “cannot display” roadblock.
I Googled the problem, got a lot of hits, and tried going through a whole shopping list of things to try to resolve the “cannot display” problem. Nothing worked.
Since Firefox and Opera were working, it didn’t occur to me that it might be some kind of DNS issue. Otherwise, those would have been having problems as well. So, I didn’t pursue that angle.
Ultimately, in a whim of desperation, I did an NSLOOKUP on connect.microsoft.com, and tried plugging the IP number into the address field in IE8… and bingo! It worked. I logged in and all looked normal after a detour through the live login site.
After closing and restarting IE, it now works using the name of the URL, as well.
Go figure.
Office 2007 SP2 Released!
Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is now available from Microsoft. To download or to read about issues fixed by this service pack, click here.
Caveat Canon Cartridge Claim
Can you tell that I have a thing for alliteration?
I have a Canon Pixma iP5000 with which I’ve been mostly satisfied. It cleans the jets before and after each printing, and I haven’t had any of the issues I had with my HP1200, where things got clogged and the printer became unusable after a couple of years. Everything I print with the Pixma has been crisp and clean, as long as the ink cartridges haven’t run dry… which brings me to my one gripe.
In what I can only conclude is an effort to improve Canon’s bottom line, the printer’s sensors sense way prematurely that you’re out of ink. I don’t do a whole lot of printing—maybe a few pages a week. So, my ink cartridges should last me a long time. Until about six months ago, each time it told me that a cartridge was empty, I naively believed it, and replaced it. At the time, Costco—where I bought the printer—was still stocking the replacement cartridges, so it was no big deal. Canon, Costco, and I were pretty satisfied.
About six months ago, I got a message that my cartridges were running low. So, I put them on the list for my next trip to Costco. To my horror, however, Costco now stocked only some of the cartridges I needed, and not the ones that allegedly were running low. I mentally back-burnered the problem, thinking I’d either order online or cave and pick up one from Office Depot when it finally did run dry. This was over six months ago.
Sure enough, about two weeks later, I got a message that the smaller black ink cartridge (6e) was empty. Because I needed what I was trying to print (the IRS doesn’t understand “sorry—I was out of ink”), I decided to push the reset button and see if whatever it printed (despite the message) would at least be dark enough. It was perfect. No problem at all. And… the message I see when I print went back to “running low” instead of empty.
So, I decided to see how long I could engage in this little charade. I’ve now pushed the “you’re lying to me, go ahead and print” button at least three times. Each time, my persistence and skepticism has been rewarded with a perfect copy of whatever I wanted to print, and a restoration of the “running low” status. In fact, the “running low” status stays at par for many more printing episodes, only reverting to the “empty” lie after many successful printings. So far, I’ve never actually witnessed a cartridge going empty, so there’s no telling how much more mileage I can get out of the current cartridges.
I’ve concluded that prior to this discovery, I must have wasted many cartridges that were not really anywhere close to empty, but which I thought were empty. I’ve probably saved $100 or more, not to mention the reduced impact on the environment.
Bottom line… if you have an iP5000, don’t necessarily believe that it’s telling the truth when it says you’re out of ink. Push the reset button (just below the power button) and see if what you get is acceptable. My guess is that it will be, and that you’ll get a good deal more printing out of that “empty” cartridge..
A solution to “Word cannot register your account” for Word blogging
When trying to register my wife’s Wordpress blog with Word so she could blog directly from Word, we kept getting the message Word cannot register your account. I got this message periodically when I registered my own blogs, but it eventually worked. So, kept it up. No joy.
After failing for several days, I finally decided to see if something more was known about the problem to try to see if it was a “you gotta live with it issue. Eventually, I found the answer! As it turns out, it’s a setting in Wordpress’ Dashboard. I don’t recall seeing this setting a few years ago when I registered my blogs, so it might be something new they added to make things less hit-or-miss. In any case, it worked! Here’s the fix.
- At the bottom of the left column, under Dashboard, click on Settings. This will expand the list of settings sections.
- Click Writing.
- Under Remote Publishing, enable XML-RPC. If you think you’ll ever use Atom, then enable it, too, just for the heck of it.
At the bottom of the Dashboard window, click Save Changes. And Bob’s your uncle!
Windows Security Center Lies
Periodically, Windows Security Center lies to me, saying that AVG Anti-Virus Free reports that it is turned off. This is never true. Telling Security Center to turn AVG on—despite its not being off—never clears the bogus message.
For a while, however, I could fix the problem by toggling AVG’s resident shield off and then back on. Today, however, that no longer worked. I did find a solution, though.
What did work was to try to reinstall AVG 8.5, then choosing the Repair option. After running the repair, the problem went away (until next time, I guess).
An alternative would be to tell Windows not to monitor the antivirus status. Personally, I don’t like this option because—who knows—one of these times, Windows Security Center might eventually be correct. Besides, I don’t like sweeping things under the carpet. It leaves a little bulge, and even if it doesn’t, just knowing it’s there makes me uneasy. I don’t want to run the risk of tripping over unseen hazards.
Six cute new IE8 features
I’ve been exploring the new Internet Explorer 8. While I’m not giving up Firefox anytime soon, IE8 does have some potentially useful new features. Here are six that you might find useful, or at the very least cute.
1. Color coded tabs. When you click a link or initiate a search from a tab, the tabs are color coded so that you can see which tabs are associated.
2. IE8 now has “caret browsing”. You toggle it on/off using F7. This feature puts a visible text cursor into the web page so that you can see where you are in the page.
3. When you select text, a button appears containing “accelerators” that can do something with the selected text. My favorite is Search with Google, since this saves me several steps.
4. IE8 can now open the last browser session—whenever you want, not just after a crash.
5. If you accidentally close a tab, IE8 can reopen it. Just right-click any existing tab.
6. You can give IE8 amnesia about your surfing. Look back at the picture for #4—second option from the top. If you press Ctrl+Shift+P (or choose InPrivate Browsing from the menu), IE8 turns off the tape recorder and starts a new copy of IE8. It will cache and remember for the InPrivate session. But, when you close the InPrivate session, IE8 will suddenly be saying “Numbered Swiss Account? What numbered Swiss account?” Any trace that you ever did what we know you didn’t do will be gone.
Where can you get the new IE8? Hmmm Here… let me Google that for you:
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=download+internet+explorer+8
lmgtfy is the ultimate in helpful arrogance. I’m still waiting for an occasion to use it, but I’m afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings.
Windows Sidebar Clock Can Steal CPU Cycles!
Last night, I noticed that programs were taking a while to start, and my computer was being sluggish in general. I right-clicked Windows Vista’s Taskbar and started the Task Manager to see if I could figure out why. In the Processes tab, I clicked CPU to reverse sort by CPU consumption.
In this picture, both instances of sidebar.exe were showing 0%. Last night, however, one of the sidebar.exe instances was showing 50% CPU usage! Note that there might be two instances of sidebar.exe running. I’m given to understand that the second process is used for managing Sidebar gadgets that do not come with Vista.
In any case, the question for me was WHY?
I closed Sidebar, and CPU usage for it dropped to 0% (although the two processes did not close). I restarted Sidebar, and the 50% problem returned after a short while, although not immediately.
Long story short… I traced the problem to the analog clock that comes with Vista’s Sidebar. I tried closing the gadgets one at a time, thinking that the problem would be with WeatherBug or one of the other add-on Gadgets. But, the problem went <POOF> (that’s techspeak for disappeared) when I right-clicked the clock and chose Close Gadget.
I checked on my laptop computer and the problem does not exist there, so I don’t know how widespread the issue is. However, if you’re noticing that the computer seems to be churning when you aren’t aware of any big programs running… do what I did—check the Processes list in the Task Manager. And, prepare for the unexpected!
In any case, my computer is running a good deal faster this morning. I temporarily replaced the clock that comes with Vista with something called Digital Dutch Clock. But, it exhibited the same problem as Vista’s built-in one. When I get around to installing Windows 7, I’ll have to see if it has the same clock issue. But, for now, I’ve placed an old wooden clock where I can see it.
Google Toolbar Option’s Unexpected Consequence
Yesterday, I installed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). Along with it, I installed a new version of the Google Toolbar (beta). Mind you, I normally use Firefox rather than IE8. Its logic better fits my way of thinking, and it has some features I deem essential. But, I’m a new-version-aholic, so when something new appears, I have to try it, and since I’m a big fan of the Google toolbar in Firefox, I figured I’d try it as well.
Within a few minutes of installing, however I discovered that the new Google Toolbar had hijacked Ctrl+Space to make its own quick search box work. I use Ctrl+Space in Word and many other applications to clear character formatting. So, having it suddenly made unavailable was unwelcome. That first time I pressed Ctrl+Space, instead of seeing the character formatting reset to normal, I saw this:
Cute, perhaps, but unwelcome, since I already use Ctrl+Space for something else. Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to change this assignment to something less invasive and more useful. Fortunately, you can turn it off—and that’s what I did. Right click the Google toolbar in IE and choose Google Toolbar Options. In the Search Tab, turn off Enable quick search box to search outside the browser, and you get Ctrl+Space back.
If it were just in Word that I use Ctrl+Space, I could reassign the function to a different key combination. But, this handy shortcut works in a variety of programs—most of which do not permit key reassignment. So, instead, I’m saying No to Google’s offer.