Koozie Notes

Outlook Express: Error Message

A user brought another interesting problem to my attention.  For E-mail, they used Outlook express on their Windows XP computer with Office 97 installed.  Whenever they click on the spell check button from within Outlook Express, they receive the following error message.

"Error occurred while the spelling was being checked"

After searching on Google, I came across a quick solution that required downloading and installing a single dll file [CSAPI3T1.dll]. 

1. Download the dll file from the web page listed above.
2. Copy CSAPIeT1.dll to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof.
3. Shutdown Outlook Express.
4. Start Outlook Express.

As soon as we restarted Outlook Express, spell checking was working fine.

-Chris

SysAdmin Day

Today is SysAdmin Day.  What, you do not know about SysAdmin Day?

SysAdmin Day is celebrated once a year on the last Friday for July.  There is even a web site which advocates this celebration and provides some nifty gift ideas for them.

So go find your sysadmin and let them know how much you appreciate them with a great big hug. :-) 

-Chris

Note:  Also take a look at Sysadmin of the Year.

Perl Survey 2007

If you are a perl programmer, the perl community would appreciate if you could spare five (5) minutes to complete the 2007 perl survey.

Take part in the 2007 Perl Survey!

The Perl Survey is an attempt to capture a picture of the Perl community in all its diversity. No matter what sort of Perl programmer you are, we'd love to hear from you.

Be sure to read the privacy policy and complete the survey before September 30, 2007.

-Chris

Mossberg Reviews Picnik: Online Photo Tool

Wall Street Journal columnist, Walt Mossberg, has a good piece in today's edition on Picnik, an online, web based photo editing tool.

One of the best examples of these slick new Web-based application is Picnik, a sophisticated, photo-editing application offered free of charge at picnik.com. I have been testing Picnik and I like it a lot. It's a fast and impressive program for tweaking and improving your photos, then posting them to popular photo Web sites, saving them to your own computer, emailing them, or even printing them.

Looks very promising for web based applications.

-Chris

Netflix Price Drop

Capitalism is in full swing.  Netflix announces that it will drop the monthly fee on its 3-out plan by $1 per month.

The $17.99 monthly plan is reduced to $16.99 and provides unlimited DVD rentals with three DVDs out at a time and the ability to watch 17 hours of movies and TV series instantly on a PC.

Netflix members are not required to do anything to receive the price reduction. Their new lower price will automatically be reflected on their next bill, on or after July 24, 2007

-Chris

$75.00 Pay-at-the-Pump Gas Limit

This past Saturday it happen again.  While attempting to fill up my 2004 Suburban, the gasoline pump stop dispensing fuel when I hit the $75.00 mark.  This is annoying and it is getting more common than ever since gas started going over $3 per gallon.

I did a bit of research, and it seems that companies that run gas stations should take the most blame on  setting these artificial limits.  Bruce Schneier has a good post on the subject of these type of credit card limits and even refers his readers to article at SF Gate, which covers this problem as well.

So now it is time for me to contact this particular company and complain.

-Chris

New, Cheaper HD Tivo?

Reports are coming out that Tivo may be releasing a more reasonible price HD Tivo soon.  I first caught wind of this story on Slashdot, but Ars Techinca published the scoop.

[T]o summarize, the S3L loses some of the finer points of the regular Series 3, namely the OLED display, the fancier remote, and THX certification. There's also a 90GB drop in HD size which shaves more than 10 hours of HD recording time off of the device.  Are these things worth the $300+ price delta compared to the regular Series 3?

So a question remains.  Will Tivo offer lifetime service?  I currently have two (2) series 2 with lifetime service and prefer it over paying a monthly service fee.

-Chris

Custom Printer Forms: How to print to non-standard sizes

Am I the only one who feels that Microsoft keeps changing how to setup custom paper sizes for printing with each new version of Windows? 

Today, I needed to configure an XP machine so that it could print correctly to an impact printer loaded with 8.5" X 7" tractor feed paper.  Lucky for me I finally located a solution.

1. In Windows XP, start the printer control applet.  (Start -> Printers and Faxes)
2. Select the Menu Bar labeled "Printer Tasks". (also you may need Administrator rights)
3. From the File menu select "Server Properties" (Print server properties)
4. Select the "Forms" tab
5. Check the box labeled "Create a New Form" and enter the page sizes you need.
6. Type in a form name in the "Form Name:" box.
7. Click on the "Save Form" Button.

-Chris

Custom FTP URLs

Today, I helped out another user with a ftp file download issue.  They needed to be able to download files via ftp and didn't want to use another program like FileZilla or even the command prompt on windows.   I did a little searching and found a link to the RFC for building custom ftp urls for use in their web browser of choice.

ftp://username:password@ftp.example.com

Now they don't have to learn how to use another application.

-Chris

==========================
3.1. Common Internet Scheme Syntax  [RFC 1738]

   While the syntax for the rest of the URL may vary depending on the
   particular scheme selected, URL schemes that involve the direct use
   of an IP-based protocol to a specified host on the Internet use a
   common syntax for the scheme-specific data:

        //<user>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<url-path>

   Some or all of the parts "<user>:<password>@", ":<password>",
   ":<port>", and "/<url-path>" may be excluded.  The scheme specific
   data start with a double slash "//" to indicate that it complies with
   the common Internet scheme syntax. The different components obey the
   following rules:

    user
        An optional user name. Some schemes (e.g., ftp) allow the
        specification of a user name.

    password
        An optional password. If present, it follows the user
        name separated from it by a colon.

   The user name (and password), if present, are followed by a
   commercial at-sign "@". Within the user and password field, any ":",
   "@", or "/" must be encoded.

Note that an empty user name or password is different than no user

   name or password; there is no way to specify a password without
   specifying a user name. E.g., <URL:ftp://@host.com/> has an empty
   user name and no password, <URL:ftp://host.com/> has no user name,
   while <URL:ftp://foo:@host.com/> has a user name of "foo" and an
   empty password.

    host
        The fully qualified domain name of a network host, or its IP
        address as a set of four decimal digit groups separated by
        ".". Fully qualified domain names take the form as described
        in Section 3.5 of RFC 1034 [13] and Section 2.1 of RFC 1123
        [5]: a sequence of domain labels separated by ".", each domain
        label starting and ending with an alphanumerical character and
        possibly also containing "-" characters. The rightmost domain
        label will never start with a digit, though, which
        syntactically distinguishes all domain names from the IP
        addresses.

    port
        The port number to connect to. Most schemes designate
        protocols that have a default port number. Another port number
        may optionally be supplied, in decimal, separated from the
        host by a colon. If the port is omitted, the colon is as well.

    url-path
        The rest of the locator consists of data specific to the
        scheme, and is known as the "url-path". It supplies the
        details of how the specified resource can be accessed. Note
        that the "/" between the host (or port) and the url-path is
        NOT part of the url-path.

   The url-path syntax depends on the scheme being used, as does the
   manner in which it is interpreted.

iPhone Giveaway

While running some errands during lunch today, I heard on the radio that Rush Limbaugh's radio program will be giving away 10 iPhones with ATT&T 450 service plan when you signup on his website, www.rushlimbaugh.com.

For everybody who wins an iPhone, we're buying you a two-year service contract with AT&T.  We will send you a check, roughly $1500, that will cover the cost of a two-year contract, which is mandatory.  You have to sign up for two years with AT&T when you get an iPhone.  So you'll get the $1500 check, you'll get the iPhone, you're going to get a year subscription to Rush 24/7, and if you're a current subscriber, we'll extend your subscription by a year so that you can make full use of the podcasting capacity of the site in conjunction with the phone.

[iPhone giveaway rules & regulations]

-Chris