shahine.com/omar/

Now this is an awesome life hack. I love hacks like this because it makes "the man" work for you. I just checked and a few of the items I've ordered from Amazon are cheaper already...

Web site Refund Please tracks your Amazon purchases for price drops in the 30 days following your purchase date, helping you take advantage of Amazon's under-advertised 30-day price guarantee.

Source: Track Amazon's 30-day refund guarantee with Refund Please

Windows apparently didn't get my memo. I don't have a modem any more. This is the dialog you get the first time you add or edit a phone number in Outlook. BTW this happened with Outlook 2007 with Vista.

Windows Home Server is exactly what I need. It solves so many of my sharing/archiving/backup issues. That coupled with unlimited offsite storage from Mozy, Carbonite, Amazon S3 (and maybe one day Live Storage) and I'm set for 2007 . Well more like 2008 unless I get on the beta... hint hint Lee Linden!

I'm also dammed excited about the Apple Keynote. Not sure why really... I no longer have love for the Mac OS, but the fact that every Mac is a PC and that I now own every iPod form factor might (yes I bought a Shuffle) have something to do with it. I'm also eying a MacBook Nano if such thing exists.

Unless you crawled under a rock, you should know that this year Daylight savings time has been extended by 4 weeks. This is a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It will begin 3 weeks earlier in the spring, and end 1 week later in the fall. Cool you might think! Well not if you are a computer.

"The bill amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 by changing the start and end dates of daylight saving time starting in 2007. Clocks will be set ahead one hour on the second Sunday of March instead of the current first Sunday of April. Clocks will be set back one hour on the first Sunday in November, rather than the last Sunday of October. This will make electronic clocks that had pre-programmed dates for adjusting to daylight saving time obsolete and will require updates to computer operating systems. The date for the end of daylight saving time has the effect of increasing evening light on Halloween (October 31)."

[Source: Wikipedia]

Microsoft has documented how different products will deal with this change. IMHO this is going to be a disaster as a number of products will not be updated and your appointments for 4 weeks of the year may be off by an hour.

If you recently launched Outlook 2007 on Vista, or after downloading the optional windows updates for XP you might be greeted with this dialog:

The bad news is if you own a Windows Mobile Device. Apparently it's up to the maker of said device to issue an update. What are the chances your carrier will release an update? I don't know; what is their track record for doing so up till now? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Seems like you can hack together a CAB file with the necessary registry changes to fix the problem. I'm a bit too lazy for that right now. Why we can't provide a download is beyond me.

Anyway this gist of it is this. All your appointments are created with a start time and an end time. Even All day events in Outlook (which is a design flaw IMHO, they should be floating events tied to a date, not an event that starts at 12am and ends at 12am in a given time zone). Well, the timezone information operates according to a timezone rule. The timezone rule is generally managed by the operating system. Well, when daylight savings time changes, the rule needs to be updated (the rule specifies the pattern for when daylight savings time starts and ends). Well, that's great... rule gets updated. But what about all the events that were already created that now live inside the window of the old rule and the new rule (for example, events that fall in the last week in march?) Well, all the events have to be updated to reflect the new start and end time. This has to be done manually by software. Ick. Here is what Microsoft has to say regarding Outlook:

Impact on Office Outlook calendar items

During the extra weeks of daylight saving time, calendar items in your programs will operate as if standard time is in effect unless you apply an update. Outlook, Microsoft Exchange Server, and other products use daylight saving time rules in effect since 1987.

Without an update, the following will occur for Outlook calendar items that are active during the weeks of March 11, 2007, to April 1, 2007, and October 28, 2007, to November 4, 2007:

• Single-instance appointments and reminders will appear one hour earlier than they should.
• Recurring appointments will appear one hour earlier than they should.
• All-day events will shift and span two days. Existing all-day events are associated with 24 specific hours instead of a given date. In the extra weeks of daylight saving time, the event appears to move backward by one hour, which is why all-day events will then span two days.

That's what the dialog above is doing. When Outlook is done you get a log file that has entries like so:

[Original Time Zone]
(GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US && Canada)

[New Time Zone]
(GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US && Canada) (Update)

[Time Zone Update Log]
Type: Appointment
ID: 040000008200e00074c5b7101a82e00800000000000000000000000000000000000000004d00000076436
16c2d55696401000000434430303030303038423935313144313832443830304330344642313632354439
3632314542443443343632333334354244424346414541433930393134374600
Subject: New Year's Eve
Old Start Time: Monday, December 31, 2007 8:00 AM
New Start Time: Monday, December 31, 2007 8:00 AM
Old End Time: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 8:00 AM
New End Time: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 8:00 AM
Recurring: No
Result: Success

...

Now I'm set with Outlook... but hosed on everything else.

Update: for a complete list of vendor fixes see this.

Is changing diapers till Feb 27th. As of Tuesday Jan 2nd I'm officially on parental leave at Microsoft for 8 weeks.

My new job also involves trying to keep this sad face to a minimum. I'm two days into this job and man it's hard work. My family left town a few days ago and that was super depressing. My Mom has been staying with us for close to 2 months (since Sarah's birth) and my father for about a week. They have been amazing and have been pretty much done all the cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and helping out with Sarah. They left the day after Lora started work (she is only able to take 6 weeks of maternity leave since she is currently "in training" as a fellow). IMHO that's a crime.

When they all left I had that sinking feeling. You know the one you got when your parents dropped you off at college... panic, fear and loneliness to name a few. I'm sure things will get better as she gets older, but it's eerie quiet around my house. This will also sound weird, but this is also when I feel like my daughter went from being a novelty to having a real impact on my life. You see since 2 weeks after she was born I was going to work every day and things kinda seemed normal for a big part of the day. And when I came home, my house was filled with family etc. Now I'm home all day, which is weird, and have to do pretty much everything... Plus Lora isn't around and she knew how to do everything baby related! I will note that my diaper changing times are improving drastically.

Anyway, my time not paying attention to her is extremely limited. As is my mobility and all sorts of other things. Sleep is kinda broke up to as I'm usually on duty for the 2am or 5am feeding.

Anyway, I've set my OOF message on my work email account to tell people to forget about hearing from me with regards to anything work related for the next 8 weeks. If you want to know what I'm up to, my blog is where I'll be hanging out when Sarah and me aren't sleeping .

BTW - I have a new found respect for mommies.

For the past 3 days, Adobe has insisted on creating a folder called Updater5 in My Documents folder. No attempts to stop it have worked (any time you re-install or update it just comes back).

I can't stand this!

Why bother you ask? Well Acrobat Reader 8 sucks much less than previous versions, and I've found some compatibility problems with FoxIt Reader that have brought me back to Acrobat Reader.

I'm also looking at purchasing Acrobat Standard so that I can digitize my scans as PDF files using Optical Character Recognition (I previously used Microsoft Document Imaging, part of Office, but the version in Office 2007 ships with an IFilter that does not seem to work with Windows Desktop Search 3 and Vista, meaning all my current scanned TIFF and MDI files with embedded OCR are are useful as static image files). PDF files are indexed fine though. Go figure.

update: The registry key does not seen to work. Aaron Parker has an excellent post on how to create you own customized installer that will never do anything bad.

[Source: Deploying Adobe Reader 8, A Step-by-Step Guide to Silently Installing and Configuring Adobe Reader 8]

A while ago Paul from Kiwali.com was kind enough to send me some complimentary artwork for our two Nano's (currently they only have stickers for the first gen nanos, stickers for second gen are in the works). A lot of people would ask me how or where I got my iPod (cause it looked so different). Looks like Kiwali has branched out to support the larger sibling of the Nano as well as some artistic t-shirts and the like...

The nice thing about these decals is that they protect your iPod from scratches and fingerprints.

Walt Mossberg has a great write up on the Suckiness of the Comcast DVR. It echoes my experiences with that horrible piece of junk.

I like this quote:

"The answer is that, at least in my recent experience with the nation's biggest cable company, Comcast, the high-definition DVR it supplies is just awful. If cable boxes were sold at retail like consumer-electronics devices, the Comcast DVR I tested, built by Motorola, would get creamed by better competitors."

and this one:

"Also, the user interface on the Comcast box is crude and confusing -- nothing like the elegant interfaces people have become used to on their personal computers and devices like iPods. The TiVo interface, by contrast, is effective and attractive."

and this one:

"In the program grid, even on a 50-inch, high-definition screen with acres of room, the Comcast box displays just four rows of stations at a time. Until recently, there was a fifth row, but now that has been replaced by an ad. The ad not only sucks up space, but also is aggravating because it gets selected each time you reach the bottom of the grid screen.

Advertising is fine, but in this case, sacrificing 20% of an already paltry information screen for an ad just shows contempt for users."

This is by far the most scathing comments I've seen Walt make about any product. "crude and confusing", "contempt for users" are not things you want Walt saying about your product or company.

I wonder if the BigCo media execs at Comcast are at all embarrassed? Probably not.

Starting Jan 1st I'll be using Quicken 2007 and my existing Money 2007 side by side for as many days as it takes me to make a decision about which one is better.

I wrote about how I might switch back in August, but when I started to do so it was too daunting to do in the middle of the year. Since the export/import story is impossible I decided to wait till Jan 1st and start with a clean file and only bring over my necessary information to keep my financial life chugging a long.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Scott has a great post on the relative pros and cons of the iPod, Zune and Clix.

This post is my delta of his, so go read his first.

I currently own the following

• iPod 30GB (5.5G, the new video one)
• iPod 4GB Nano (1G)
• Zune 30GB (Black)

I used to have two Nano's, one for me and one for my wife. However, mine broke, I returned it to Costco for a full refund and got the iPod 30GB (sidenote: Coscto has the most amazing return policy).

The Zune I have is on loan to me as I was an internal beta tester. I've had the thing for a while.

Since I stopped commuting from San Francisco to Mountain View every day, my usage of the device has changed. Back then it was all about the Nano cause I wanted convenience and smallness. I would just keep the thing around my neck and use the Lanyard Headphones and never had to worry about packing it up etc.

Now that I drive to work every day, smallness is less important. The Nano pretty much stays in the car all the time. If our second Nano broke I'd get something bigger.

Since I got the iPod Video though, I've radically altered how much we use the thing. Lora LOVES the iPod video. She has loaded that thing up with Video Podcast, Audio Podcast and TV Shows like Lost Season 3 and Heroes Season 1. Lora and I are spending a few hours a day in our Daughter's room feeding and trying to get her to bed in her crib, so it's awesome to have tons of content to listen to and watch. We just plop the iPod in our JBL On Stage B and entertain ourselves (and Sarah... she likes John Meyer and Jack Johnson).

Basically, TV Shows and Podcasts are the killer app for us at this point in our lives. We can't get enough of this. Sadly all these season passes are going to but a dent in our budget (they aren't cheap). When we start to travel more with Sarah, I imagine the video features will continue to be important.

Now the Zune. I think the video screen is better, but I have no video to watch on it. The Zune Marketplace is great for audio (I have a Zune Pass which is great for downloading new music I would not normally buy) but lacks any kind of video. Also the Zune SUCKS for Podcasting. You cannot "bookmark" a podcast, or advance chapters. This makes it a non-starter for anything but music... and for music I really don't need a 30GB player that's huge. Basically I'm never out of the house long enough to warrant having that much darn music. and needing something the size of a first generation iPod. Furthermore, I don't need or listen to all my music all the time. I pretty much stick to 20 or so albums and anything else I put into a playlist. Oh, and I definitely don't need Wifi right now. Not till a few more peeps are using the Zune.

That leaves all the other stuff (like the Clix). I stopped using Windows Media Player... seriously what's the point? PlaysForSure is dead to me, and the Zune app is new and different and it's bad enough that I need to run iTunes and the Zune app. I don't have room in my life for WMP (other than being a great ripping app, it's shown me no love over the years).... Oh, there is one small exception. That's what works on Windows Media Center, so till Zune has a 10 foot UX for Media Center I will continue to rip my CDs using WMP to WMA lossless and then Rip my Audio to AAC using iTunes. The beauty of the Zune app is that it can play my AAC files that sync to the iPod as well as any WMA files.

Oh, and I'm really quite close to getting a Shuffle. Why? Well as I mentioned, I no longer commute, and any traveling that we do I'll be bringing along either the iPod or the Zune or both. Size is no problem when you have a laptop bag etc. But when I'm out and about (like in town, or at the mall) it would be nice to have some tunes and I like the idea of clipping something the size of  a remote to my clothing and using my super sweet Shure E500PTH with their small cord (19 inches) and drowning my self in nothing but my music.

What's more important, cool whizbang features or logging in every day and seeing the info you expect to see? While Hotmail Windows Live Mail has had it's share of problems over the years, one thing we've learned over time is that no mater what you do, if a customer logs in one day and doesn't see their email, nothing else matters at that point. It doesn't matter if the reason they lost their mail was because they didn't log in for the last x number of days before their account was deleted, or if a server blew up containing all their mail.

Trading off between investments in new stuff, and keeping the service running for your millions of users is not an easy decision. Sometimes you need to put things on hold and double up in your QoS efforts.

In fact, I remember a story some one told me a year or so ago. Over the holidays (when things were quiet at work) a man walked into our building in Mountain View hysterical that all his mail was gone. Luckily the receptionist got some one on our team to talk to him. In the end we were able to restore his mail . Don't ask me how.

I hope those 60 GMail users get their mail back (and hopefully it's only 60). It's probably not a fun time for the Googlers that are currently at the Googleplex figuring out how to undelete lots of deleted data.

What are people using to backup to Amazon S3? I've tried a number of tools and they all fall short for one reason or another.

The basic problem with Amazon S3 is this:

1. They do not support rename/moves (you must do a delete/copy)
2. They write the current upload time as the modified time. This breaks programs that rely on date/time to detect changes.

Jungle Disk

Great app, it allows you to map a drive letter to your Amazon S3 account. It has built in backup, however, it does not remove things in the destination that no longer exist in the source. I personally want my backup to be a mirror of my source because I tend to organize/move files around a lot.

Jungle Disk + SyncBackSE

This combo proved to be horrible because SyncBackSE relies on file date/time modifications to detect changes. The end result is that lots of unchanged files get sync' ed again. To make matters worse, when SyncBackSE copies a file to a remote drive, it will upload a temp file and then rename it. Well since Amazon S3 does not support rename, this results in two file uploads by Jungle Disk (and wastes time and bandwidth).

SyncBackSE has an option to use file hashes to detect changes, but this is far slower and requires that each file be downloaded to get the hash. No good for remote backup where you are paying for the bandwidth.

Jungle Disk + SyncToy

If you configure SyncToy to "echo" files from your local machine to Amazon using Jungle Drive you get what appears to be perfection. However, I have noticed that renames and deletes on the source are not mirrored on the destination. I suspect this has to do with either a bug in Jungle Disk or some issue with amazon's lack of support for rename.

Furthermore, SyncToy does not delete directories on the destination using echo.

S3 Backup

I'm currently trying this out, but it lacks any backup scheduling support. I also do not know if it will delete files on the destination that are no longer on the source. I Will find out soon enough I guess.

update: looks like this scenerio is possible, but the option to delete files on the destination that are no longer on the source is greyed out in the current beta. hmm.

Anyone else have any tips here?

My favorite feature of RDC 6.0 is that when connecting to a Vista machine, ClearType is supported. Seriously, I hated to connect to other computers because I'm so used to ClearType and fonts are so darned ugly without it... not to mention that the new Office 2007 and Vista fonts are ClearType hinted and look terrible if ClearType is disabled. 

As for Network Level Authentication, I can't get that to work at all (I still have to auth).

The last cool feature is I can connect to my PC at work without having to VPN to the office. This is done using my smartcard.

Source: Microsoft releases Remote Desktop Connection 6.0

If the Roth 401K is an option for you, and you are not contributing to it, or are wondering if you should, I found a fantastic article by Vanguard that goes into great detail about this 401K plan.

Basically, what it amounts to is this. Do you think you will be in a higher tax bracket in retirement than you are now? Remember that money withdrawn from a Roth 401 will actually help to reduce your taxable income in retirement assuming you will have other forms of taxable income (normal 401k, pension etc). Also of note is that any corporate matching donations are still taxed for either type of plan.

One interesting wrinkle is if you are paying the AMT now. If you are that puts you in a potentially higher tax bracket now and the additional amount due for the AMT may not be reduced much relative to your normal tax liability with a pre-tax 401k. Something to think about. Because I live in California, have high property taxes + state income taxes, I'm pretty much going to be paying AMT till congress changes the tax law.

Anyway, read the article and decide for yourself. I think next year I'll be doing 50/50 traditional/roth.

I was looking for a way to put my PC to sleep from the command line (and found one). Why? Cause my new keyboard (the Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000) doesn't have a sleep button and I wanted to set the 5th customized key to do that but all it can do is launch an application. So I set it to Run:

rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

and Voila.

Does anyone know of a similar command that will invoke the User Screen under Fast User Switching? The following command simply locks the computer. It's then an extra step to get to the user selection screen on vista. The reason I ask is that it's to much of a pain to go to the vista start menu to switch users.

rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

update: well that was fast, an anonymous commenter let me know that running tsdiscon.exe will switch users and bring you back to the logon screen. Acording to Windows this command line app "Disconnects a terminal session.".