IT Werkz Sometimes

Got the review copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s (and Stephen Baxter’s) new novel ‘Firstborn’.

The Firstborn were the mysterious builders of the black monolith, in the 2001 film and book, and the accompanying introductory letter with the book states the Firstborn “are seeking to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic”. Inneresting.

It goes on to say “Now, the Firstborn are back. This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a quantum bomb speeding toward Earth. It is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed – and one that will obliterate Earth”.

Entertainment Weekly says “Clarke and Baxter have mastered the art of saving the world in blockbuster style. But will the world survive when it confronts the Firstborn face-to-face?”.

Sounds like I have found something to read that will stop me playing WoW.

An agent has phoned about a position it Gibraltar. They provide flights to and from the destination at the beginning and end of the contract and accomodation. They are not too keen on people flying home every weekend though as there is sometimes weekend overtime. OK, I can do the overtime but if there is none then I would want to come home. This is one of the very few times when I would want to have a telephone interview first to find out exactly what the terms are. 

Had to do a hard reset on the Treo to get around the reading email problem, which rebooted the Treo. Now the pain of setting up 4 email accounts on it and whatever other settings I had amended. It still doesn’t work at home though as there is virtually no network coverage at all, so it looks like I might have to jump ship.

I think the only network that will give me a service from home is Vodafone and I’m not sure whether they will be able to compete with T-Mobile’s tarrif. But if T-Mobile doesn’t work from home it doesn’t really matter how cheap it is.

Quote of the day

‘No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar’ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

My Treo 650 has started to reboot every time I try and read any email, and email is at least half the reason for having a Treo in the first place.

Did a quick search on Google and didn’t immediately find any help that was relevant so instead I decided to setup the Treo software on the Vista PC. The usual clunking about process hoping that the software would work on Vista. I added 4 email accounts, which are already setup on the device, and resync’d. The Hotsync window displayed its synchronizing progress, which is a bit worrying as so much of this data I would prefer to keep private and I obviously have no idea what Hotsync is doing. All kinds of filenames were displayed as being updated and backed up and it could have been mashing everything up for all I know. None of this software has ever been independantly tested or verified, we just have to believe that Palm have tested and proved it to some standard they regard as sufficient before it is unleashed into the wild.

Disconnected the Treo, started its email application Versmail and it rebooted immediately. Consistent. Back to Google I suppose.

Have stumbled to level 20 in WoW and I’m still very much a newbie. I was levelling up at a rate of 1.5 levels a day but there is no way that is going to continue, soon it’ll be a level a week I reckon.

I never got the option to get any Zeppelin tickets. All 3 applications weren’t pulled from the hat but considering there were a million names in the hat and only about 18,000 tickets it’s hardly surprising. 

Quote of the day

‘How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time’ Fred Brooks

I’ve been having an ongoing problem with both Outlook’s Address Book and a new problem with photo’s taken on the Treo not being sync’d with the PC.

Thought if I tried to describe them as an entry here then by the very act of trying to explain the problem I might understand the problems better myself. I’ve even resorted to reading my own back entries on Outlook to see if they shed any light, to no avail. Firstly, for several months, I’ve been having problems with Outlook’s Address Book. If I write a new email and click on the To control to select an address from the address book then the Outlook Address Book is empty, as is the Personal Address Book. If I select Contacts then some addresses are displayed. These are a subset of the original complete address book that I have keyed in recently.

On the other hand if I select Contacts in the left hand pane of Outlook then I can see all of my original addresses. Duh!

The problem with the Treo is that I have suddenly found that photo’s taken with it are not being uploaded to the PC. A couple of months ago they were. Can’t even remember how these were sync’d.

Changing the default address book

Just read some docs on how the address book is setup and there are a couple of things I can try. Firstly I can try and change the default Address Book. This is currently set to the Outlook Address Book and has only a few entries in it. As Contacts has all of my addresses in it then it makes sense to use this as an address book.

From the Tools menu, select Address Book (Ctrl Shift B) to open the address book dialog box. From the Tools menu select Options to display the Addressing dialog box. If my scatter brain thinking is correct in the ‘Show this address list first’ section will be displayed Outlook Address Book. This needs amending to Contacts. Click Apply and OK.  This will work provided Contacts has a setting that it is an address book and that it can be displayed as an address book. If not carry on below.

Why are my contacts not appearing in the address book?

This is normally because the setting that defines the Contacts folder as being an email address book has been changed.

From the navigation pain right click on the Contacts folder, select Properties and then select the Outlook Address Book tab. Hopefully Contacts will be displayed. The ‘Show this folder as an email address book’ checkbox should also be displayed and checked. If it’s not checked then check it.

If the ‘Show this folder as an email address book’ option is not visible, that means that an Outlook Address Book has not been defined. Lord knows what I do then.