Making Vista Smaller

There is a program that claims to reduce the footprint of a typical Vista installation. The program would permanently remove components that are not part of the core of Vista. So without them, Vista should still be functioning. Components like Media Player and Messenger. I will definitely give this a try because a typical Vista installtion takes up about 10GB of disk space whereas XP only takes about 2GB. Until I have tried it, I will not know if this will speed up Vista or reduce Vista's hog on system resources.

http://www.vlite.net/index.html

The new Star Trek teaser trailer

I would not be a geek if I do not post it here. But I am not geek enough to stand in line in the rain to get into the theater watch it on its first day showing.

History of the Internet

The speaker is Vint Cerf, one of the co-architects of the Internet.

What is Google Documents?

I use Google Docs (short fot Google Documents) almost everyday. This is where I keep all of my work documents. This way, I can work on them while at work, and I can resume working on them when I get home (only for emergency of course). Some of these files are published to the blog here. Just to be safe, I export any really important files on GD onto my USB thumbdrive. This way, if I have no access to the Internet, I can still have access to these documents. Google backs up these files for me, but if for some reasons, the files are lost on the Google server, no matter how much I complain to Google, the files still are lost. When it comes to backing up my data, I always do it manually onto my own drives even if the data is supposedly backed up by someone else.

A nice tutorial explaining RSS.

The all-powerful about:config in Thunderbird and Mozilla other offerings

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config

I will definitely plan on reading more on this. Other email clients offer the same customizations. Outlook has its own version of about:config, but it requires intimate knowledge of programming such as VBScript. Thunderbird uses XML which at its core is simply a plain text file. The XML parser then takes this XML file and put the settings into effect. Therefore, as long as you can understand XML syntax which is not that difficult to learn, you can be quite a "programmer" for software packages that use XML as its configuration base. I use VMware Player. I am not sure if it uses XML, but its configuration is just a plain text file as well.

In case you want to see what is on this file, it can be found here
If the link is broken, here is a copy.

Thunderbird Display Name in Contacts

By default, Thunderbird displays the first and and then the last name in that order in the Display name field in its Contacts. One can modify this behavior by going into the Config Editor under Advanced. This is the semi-GUI portion of Thunderbird.

Click Tools -> Options
Click the Advanced "tab".
In the filter box, type lastnamefirst.
Double-click mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst
Change the value to true.
Double-click mail.addr_book.lastnamefirst
Change this value to one of the following options:
0 - display the "Display Name" value as the contact's name.
1 - display Last Name, First Name as the contact's name.
2 - display First Name, Last Name as the contact's name.
The change should be noticeable in your address book immediately.

This works with Thunderbird 2

Dictionary for Decoding Women's Personal Ads

I found this tidbit on the Net. Too funny not to pass it on.

40-ish..................................49.
Adventurous..........................Slept with everyone.
Athletic................................No breasts.
Average looking.....................Moooo.
Beautiful..............................Pathological liar.
Emotionally Secure..................On medication.
Feminist...............................Fat.
Free Spirit.................................Junkie.
Friendship first.......................Former Slut.
New-Age.........................Body hair in the wrong places.
Old-fashioned........................No B.J.'s
Open-minded.........................Desperate.
Outgoing..............................Loud and embarrassing.
Professional................. ..........Bitch.
Voluptuous...........................Very fat.
Large frame...........................Hugely fat.
Wants soul mate.....................Stalker.

My New Certification

Today I passed the exam for the Suport Center Analyst. The exam consisted of 65 questions where to pass, one must get at least 80% correct. There are four sections in the exam: leadership, policy and strategy, people management, resources, and process and procedures. The bulk of the questions are in the last category which I for some reason got 65% of the questions correct, whereas the rest of the area, I got 90% correct. Now I will work on my Apple and Dell certification. My ultimate goal is the MCSE.