More Reasons Why I Hate Microsoft
Microsoft Reaches out from Beyond the Grave!
Woo, early morning blogging. Well more trouble with Microsoft. I’m sure people are shocked to hear that.
I got a call from my customer about another issue she was having with the new computer I built for her. Any Microsoft Works documents she was opening were causing the system to hang and displaying that they were around 32,000 pages long. Even though I know these documents were about 3 to 4 pages tops.
I checked online and could not find any information on the problem. Of course Microsoft does not have any documentation on this issue. I tried to repair Microsoft Works, I changed the installation of Word manually to include all the program conversion filters, and even tried installing Windows updates to see if this would fix the problem.
Nothing did. So on top of these documents displaying incorrectly, they would actually try to print 32,000 if you selected to print them. I did find out that these documents would open fine if you opened them through Microsoft Word, they would not open however if you choose the “open with” option.
My client needed these documents in a rush so I decided the best course of action would be to just convert them all from WPS format to DOC format so that they could be opened in Word by double clicking on them. This would be the easiest option for everyone, or so I thought.
After looking online I finally found Microsoft’s answer on how to convert the WPS files to Word format.
Opening each one individually and selecting “SAVE AS”!
Wow… Once again Microsoft you have left me speechless. It seems to me, a Monkey with a catapult and a bucket of poo, could come up with a better solution than this.
So I spent the next hour and a half converting her 315 WPS files to DOCs. Yes there may have been a better solution, but after having already spent 8 to 10 hours troubleshooting “Windows” problems that had nothing to do with the system I built, my patience was wearing thin.
So after all the shenanigans I went home, had a few beers and played with Kubuntu some more. I learned a couple new things last night with help from my friend Joe, and I will be posting them in a follow-up guide very soon.
Until then thanks for checking out the site, I appreciate the support!
HEMA Viral Marketing Webpage?
HEMA’s Viral Marketing Approach to the Web
Define: Viral Marketing - Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
I received an email from a friend the other day with a link to a really cool viral marketing campaign for a Dutch store called HEMA. I wasn’t sure what HEMA was at first or if it was even a real store, or just the theme for someone’s amazing flash presentation.
I have come to find out that HEMA is a Dutch department store that would be similar to Target. They focus mainly on houseware products at low prices.
HEMA which stands for Hollandse Eenheidsprijzen Maatschappij Amsterdam translates into Dutch Standard Prices Company Amsterdam. They were founded back in 1926 and have made quite an impression for themselves online considering how far this viral marketing campaign must have traveled to get emailed around Madison.
With that being said check out the email I received. Once you click on the link wait a few seconds for the fun to begin.
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HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands.
Take a look at http://producten.hema.nl:80/
HEMA’s product page. You can’t order anything and it’s in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.
This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer.
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For more information on the “real” HEMA website you can check their mainpage here:
Thanks for visiting Pseudorant!
Blog Theme Change & Other Errands
What have I been up to?
Hey all! To the 80 readers I had today thanks for stopping by! I’m guessing about 30 of them were me having not logged into WP, and I keep getting counted in the stats.
I’m sure all of you have noticed the new look. What? You have never been to the site before? As shocked as I am, I’d like to mention that my blog now has a new look. I have decided to go with a new theme that will allow me to layout my blog in a more effective way for my readers.
The theme I am using now is called WP-Multiflex-3 1.3 by Ainslie Johnson. I really liked the 3 column layout and feel this will give me more flexibility in how I can organize the site. You should see some small improvements and changes over the next week as I work on the rough edges.
I have been so busy today that I didn’t really have any time to post a guide so I decided to outline my day, and why I’m exhausted right about now.
A friend took me and my fiancée out to dinner last night at Granite City (a restaurant in Madison). It was really fun and we had a few drinks and lots of laughs.
I decided to update my WordPress theme when I got home. I have been doing so much research on blogging lately that I was pretty tired when I finally got around to doing the update and went to bed soon after.
You may have also noticed that I now have some plugins running on the site. The ones to note are the “Homepage Excerpts” which makes my site much more readable by condensing the previous posts listed on the page.
Another cool plugin I am trying out is the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin which sends anyone who comments on a post an email when there have been replies. I felt this is VERY important considering how many comments I receive per day. 
(I currently have zero comments on the blog but just think, you could be the first!)
When I got up this morning I realized I needed to mow the lawn. For those of you who know me you probably know that I have just recently moved into my first home. Because of this I had no idea what to expect the first time I mowed this lawn. The scariest thing about my yard is a giant hill I have in the back. I tried to tackle this hill with my non-propelled push mower and ended up falling down the hill in the process. I now have nice green stain on the butt of the only pair of pants I have to wear to work. Go figure.
After that my fiancée and I went out to get her a new cell phone. The reason we had to get her a new phone is because she was switching over to my phone plan. I had been against cell phones for the longest time until I saw the Apple iPhone and I went out and bought one the first week they were out.
Since I hate cell phones so much I tend to only use my iPhone to go online, send email and sometimes text message. Because of this I have over 2050+ rollover minutes saved up that my fiancée has been dying to use.
She ended up going with a Samsung phone that she is currently yakking away on. She also just informed me that her best friend is also on AT&T so it doesn’t use up minutes for the two of them to talk all night long. Like she needs more incentive to talk on the phone all night. >.<
After getting the phone we headed down to hardware store because my parents were going to buy us a grill and bird bath as a house warming present. I picked out a nice Weber charcoal grill, some tongs and charcoal. I can’t wait to use it for the first time.
We also ended up going to “Wild Birds” off Old Sauk road (in Madison) to buy a bird bath and some bird seed. It is amazing to me how much stuff specialty stores can carry. The staff at Wild Birds was very helpful and I ran into a sales guy that wanted to tell me everything about bird baths, feeders, and bird seed.
I was already pretty worn down after having almost killed myself mowing so I smiled and nodded along.
I like watching birds in my backyard but I would say I am far from how involved some of the bird enthusiasts out there are. To me throwing down seed in the grass and watching some birds root around for it, is as complex as my setup needs to be.
I am sure I will post some follow-ups in the future with how the bird colony that is forming in my backyard has grown to dangerous proportions.
Tonight my plan is to study up on some other things about my blog. I would really like to get to a point where I feel as though I can focus solely on content, but I think as with anything in computers it will be a constant learning process.
I hope everyone else is having an interesting weekend. Feel free to leave some comments and make use of the new layout and plugins! I’d be interested to hear what other people in Madison and around the country are up to. Enjoy it while you can, the weekends always seem to shoot by and then it’s back to work!
Walking with Dinosaurs – Madison, May 7th – 11th
Walking with the Dinosaurs!
As I was watching TV the other night I came across something that looked REALLY cool. There is a show coming to Madison called “Walking with Dinosaurs - The Live Experience” which was produced by Immersion Entertainment in association with the BBC. It will be in Madison from May 7th to the 11th at the Alliant Energy Center Coliseum.
The show is a live presentation that features Dinosaurs that come out and walk around on stage. Now I remember being a kid and seeing some of the Dinosaur animatronics that you could find in Museums and this blows them all away!
The show consists of 15 different Dinosaurs that come out on stage. From the trailer I saw they feature some of the most realistic Dinosaur movement possible for a live show. With a budget of $20 million dollars they have created quite a show complete with a 40 foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex!
You can check out their website for more information on the event, but unfortunately they do not do a great job of showcasing what the show offers. I found a trailer for it on YouTube which can be reached from the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX3_tnLDUEk
I also found another very interesting video related to this which gives a glimpse into the “making of” for the live performance. It is crazy to me that we live in a world with the technology to produce a mix of animatronics, robots, and human controlled creatures that even 50 years ago would have been mistaken for actual Dinosaurs.
Check out the “Making of” video at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtfMIiinJso
Unfortunately I can’t afford tickets because I have numerous other financial obligations at the moment (not to mention I have heard the show sells out wherever it goes.) so if you are fortunate enough to check it out, please leave a comment and let me know how it was!
News - My Blog Ate My Homework!! - WordPress, and Blogging Update
Formatting how I hate thee, let me count the ways!
Argh! I never realized how much work it would be to import the few previous guides I had written into www.pseudorant.com. I really enjoy writing but reformatting articles I have already written is starting to make my head hurt. I started out thinking a Blog would be all fun and games, but it turns out it’s actually hard work!
I don’t think it’s a problem with my software or the site itself. I believe it has more to do with the fact that I need to educate myself on the new software inside and out, so I can find the most efficient way of doing things.
I guess that is part of the reason I enjoy working with computers, because it offers me an ongoing education in technology.
So far every guide I have previously written needs to be reformatted so that it’s easier to read, in my opinion. I feel like it defeats the purpose of writing in depth guides if it hurts people’s eyes to try and read them. I have tried to fix these problems with my style sheet, but I think I am running into trouble because the page was manually formatted when I posted it on Blogger. Because of this, the import function carries over all the old code which causes the articles to look weird once I have them on the new site.
I am doing this post entirely through WordPress to get a feel for using the program and to see how this post will look. Because I am not importing any formatting from another website, Frontpage or Microsoft Word I think that this post will probably look ok.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not a slave to MS software. I am a slave to change in my personal life. I was diagnosed with Tourettes syndrome and OCD when I was a kid, and have grown up hating anything that forces me to change my routine. This makes the computer aspect of my life pretty funny because I work in a field that requires constant change.
Working on this Blog is teaching me numerous things about computers, technology, and myself. I need to kick myself in the ass and accept these changes to get out of my rut. I have decided one good way to do this will be documenting the random thoughts and events in my life so I can use this as a gauging point in the future.
Hopefully things will start coming together so I can get back to writing some guides for the site. I have a LOT of really cool articles planned out, not to mention all the numerous rants that tend to come pouring out from time to time. I feel like I need to rebuild the foundation on the new site, so I can start off on the right foot! Once the technical issues are out of the way it will allow me to work freely, and I will be able to start offering some really valuable content, and focus on blogging regularly.
Until I get to that point this is pretty much a construction zone, so make sure you’re wearing a hard hat, and bear with me until then! I will keep you posted with any news.
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