wtf is knol?!

Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge: "Newest Google blogs"

Lame

Offer Package

Package got here via FedEx.


Now if I can figure out how to use this FedEx slip...

RIM Internship

My RIM(read "Blackberry") offer package supposedly was shipped today. Supposedly because it only took them a day to prepare it after I emailed them asking about it 2 weeks after the verbal offer. I'll be there(Kanata) for 8 months starting in January. It'll give me some good experiences in working in a more structured environment compared to what I do right now which is pure chaos. I'll try to document it as we go!

Free Blackberry you say? RIM gives a Blackberry to every emplyee. It'll be the first one I ever touch and I'll look forward to... critique it. I don't see why people have to call them Blackberries. Is "smart phone" not good enough for it? I don't see what the big deal is about Blackberries, just as I don't see the big deal with IPods(haven't touched one ever). I tried to use Blackberry Enterprise Server(BES) at work and it was not fun. 10 years ago, when Starcraft came out, 2 people with the same CD-Key couldn't log on Battle.net at the same time. RIM could have learned something from that. When 2 BES with the same ID come online at the same time, RIM will lock out the ID and you have to call your wireless provider to unlock them. Retarded. It seems that no one there has ever played Starcraft.

And what the hell is with Microsoft not making Office Live Small Business available in Canada?! I know Canada is 10 years behind in e-commerce but come on!

Westinghouse 42" LCD

Got this delivered to me the other day. Plugged it in.. 1 dead pixel. Called Dell, which is where I bought it from, and got told that the policy is 6! dead pixels to exchange/return.

Well it's safe to say that I'll never buy anything from Dell again.

Outlook Locking out Domain Account

This happened to one user on a particular machine. Every time she would start Outlook, her domain account would get locked out. Event ID 40960 and 40961. Event ID 14 would appear some times. If this happens only to one user on one machine, rebuild the user profile.

Reboot and log in as an administrator
Rename C:\Documents and Settings\User
Log on as the user
Move everything back from the user folder that you can. Some files will be in use by windows so skip those. Make sure to empty temp folders to save some time.

Microsoft Bus Driver should be loaded in your system before installing Realtek HD Audio Driver

Looked into a few sources and I thought the solution could be clearer.

To fix this follow these steps

1. Open device manager in system properties
2. Find a PCI device in the System Devices section that has a yellow exclamation mark next to it
   
3. Right click on that device and click Update Drivers. This will install UAA Audio Bus.
4. Proceed to install Realtek HD Audio Drivers.
   

Excel Spreadsheet Takes 100% CPU to Open and Close

Today at work someone's excel took 5 minutes to open a 500KB .xls file. The CPU load was at 100% while opening. Same when closing. The issue was there was a lot of VB macros in that file. Every time it opens, Excel creates several *.emf files in %temp%. When I opened the temp folder, there were over 5000 *.emf files from 0 to 3KB.

To solve this problem, simply browse to the user's temp folder by typing %temp% in a run dialog box and delete all *.emf files. While you are at it, delete any file starting with "mso." Make sure Excel or any other program for that matter is closed. Since we don't want any application to be using a file that we are about to delete.

It's probably a good idea to periodically clean out the temp folder with the windows utility or manually.