I pay to be spied upon (it’s a new kink!)

Honestly, I’ve never before paid for a service where the provider conspired against the constitution. It’s special.

Image from Boing Boing

Cranky early morning opinion on Microsoft Office 2007

Slow, over-featured, non-intuitive, massively modified because of product developers constantly whining that management is ’stifling their creativity’ until management gives in and lets them rearrange everything.

Removing Desktop Search from the Windows Taskbar

Because you know you want to…if you have that stupid search tool (red arrow, below) taking up precious taskbar space, here’s how to remove it:

1. In the picture above, do you see the small picture of a magnifying glass in the light blue section to the right of the taskbar? (blue arrow) Right-mouse-click it.
2. In the pop-up menu that appears, place your mouse-pointer over the option Help
3. Another small pop-up will appear, offering you three options. Left-mouse-click the last one, Hide Windows Deskbar.

 

Your Taskbar search tool will now have vanished.

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To return to using the old Windows XP search engine,

1. From the desktop Start button, open the …Settings…Control Panel
2. Open the Desktop Search Settings control panel (by double-left-mouse clicking)
3. In the opened control panel, check the Use Search Companion insteqd of Desktop Search checkbox.
4. Left-mouse-click the OK button.

Now searches will be performed using the older search application.

Score!

I attended the IU Macromedia Users Group meeting this afternoon, and won an Adobe travel mug in the “Others got to go to conferences and pick up free-bees for the rest of the losers” raffle.

There are a lot of interesting developments in the Adobe Apps community these days, but unfortunately, few venues in which for me to practice them. I do get a bit of Flash work in whenever I can manage it. And I use Photoshop regularly.

I’m still waiting for the CS3 versions of the Adobe apps, however…

I Am Legend

I can’t get over the thought that the newest movie of the classic SF novel I Am Legend is just another excuse for Will Smith to run around without a shirt.

The Turning of the Seasons

It was so dark on the way to work this morning, I kept checking the dashboard clock to make sure I hadn’t broken the alarm clock and come in an hour early.

This actually happened to me once in college, and I still haven’t fully recovered my sang-froid.

On a more up note, the Delonghi espresso machine I ordered from Amazon is being delivered today, one day after it shipped! Since Amazon now has a warehouse in Cincinnati, deliveries are super-fast.

Notes for fixing ILLiad Invoices by editing the SQL tables on the ILLiad server.

Just to show I mean business here, I’m posting one of my manual fixes for the OCLC ILLiad ILL Management system. ILLiad is great, but sometimes I have to get into its guts and fiddle around.

 

Use this fix at your own risk! And I always appreciate comments and complaints. If you see a problem let me know.

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At IU we occasionally have mysterious transactions for which monthly invoices are not generated. It’s possible to create invoice records for transactions that weren’t invoiced automatically. You need to add records in the following tables:

Not-To-Do List for this blog

• Mention people by name
• Bad-mouth my employer
• Libel software companies
• Post any photos that might hinder my career
• Reveal any embarrassing personal information (sometimes, I wish I had some to reveal)
• misuse their, there, they’re, its, or it’s
• mispell ‘lose’

Hello world!

I’ve decided to start this professional blog, because all the cool kids seem to be doing it.

I work in one of the largest university libraries in the world, IU Bloomington’s Herman B. Wells library (I did some minor work programming that web site). I support the work of the Customer & Access services department, which includes circulation, inter-library loan, document delivery, off-site storage, reserve services, and stacks services. I am often lent out to other departments for specific tasks.

A lot of the time it’s not very exciting work, but I do love libraries.