Samsung Blackjack & Windows Vista

If you can’t get your Blackjack to synch w/Vista, Dowload & install THIS

“Napster Not Detected”

I’ve been rewiring my ‘Media Centering’ my living room and in the process discovered that Napster had never been installed since I upgraded to Vista. This blog post is an attempt to spare others the hour and a half I spent reading newsgroups trying to solve a problem that Napster should have addressed years ago.

Apparently, the “Napster Not Detected” in Vista’s Windows Media Player after successfully installing is a common phenomenon… Check out a search of “Napster Not Detected” in Google Groups… None, save one with any semblence of a solution.

After searching and searching I finally discovered this post.

The solution isn’t described perfectly, so I’ll step-by-step it:

1) Open IE7 (prob will work if you’re having the problem in XP w/IE6 as well)
2) Select Tools->Internet Options from the menu bar
3) Select the ‘Advanced’ tab
4) Scroll down to the ‘Java (Sun)’ Heading and uncheck the checkbox labeled ‘Use JRE x.x.x for ‘
5) Close and reopen IE7
6) Open Media Player and select the Napster tab… Wahlah!

Enjoy.

Smartphone, GPS and Google Maps

If you’re the lucky owner of a bluetooth enabled Windows Smartphone with a GPS device, Google Maps Mobile rocks!

Getting a bluetooth GPS to work with Google Maps is a piece of cake thanks to hacking from some brilliant geeks that you can read about here.

Enjoy.

Perspective

“It’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown”

John Prine – That’s The Way That The World Goes Round

Pop Quiz – US Geography

According to the National Geographic Society, half of 18-24 year olds can’t find New York state on a map.

Before feigning righteous indingation, click here to see if you’re any better.

84% for me w/an average error of 28 miles (My defense: It’s picky. The first couple of Midwest states and fitting Rhode Island, Delaware and Conneciticut in just the right spot really got me ).

Windows XP Default Fonts

Spent TOO much time today trying to track down the Windows XP default fonts by language; hoping this post will save others the trouble. Turns on Microsoft’s Dr Internationalization has a post with the info here

For anyone too lazy to click the link, here’s a table:

OS Language	Default Desktop Theme	Classic Desktop Font	Standard Desktop Font
English (US)	Standard	Microsoft Sans Serif	Tahoma
Japanese	Classic	MS UI Gothic	Tahoma
Korean	Classic	Gulim	Tahoma
Simplified Chinese	Classic	Simsun	Tahoma
Traditional Chinese	Classic	PMinglu	Tahoma
Arabic	Classic	Microsoft Sans Serif	Tahoma
Hebrew	Standard	Microsoft Sans Serif	Tahoma

All Latin & European Languages behave the same as English (US).

IE7/Firefox 1.5+ Goodness

A friend just clued me in to a neat little browser trick for better web navigating. (It does require a scoll-wheel or three button mouse and a tab-enabled browser):

When you’re reading a webpage and you run across a page-link you want to follow up on (but don’t want to go to immediately), click the middle button or scroll-wheel while on the hyperlink… Wah-lah… The page opens in a new background tab! You can continue reading the original page and tab over at your leisure.

For anyone out there who can’t afford a three button mouse, you can hold down your keyboard’s Ctrl key while left clicking the link for the same effect (prior to the middle-button revelation, this was my mildly annoying method).

WGWJB (Which Gulfstream Would Jesus Buy?)

Apparently, fullfilling the Great Commission requires a private jet. Please donate $1,000 to help televangelist Benny Hinn pay for his new Gulfstream G4SP.

Week One

First week as the new guy is in the books…. I’ve met at least 100 of the 250+ employees and can remember about 10 names. I hate being the new guy: “Uhhh, where is the supply closet?”, “What does TPS stand for?”, “We have people that sit on the first floor too? hmmm.”, “Uhhh, where is the supply closet?”.

Everybody is incredibly helpful, but I can’t wait til I can find the supply closet on my own.

New Gig

I’ve got a new job at Exstream Software. My title is Project Manager, but my real job is to help install Program Management as a discipline… The company has experienced some phenomenal growth and the need is big for PM as a role in the org. A big challenge since my manager and I are the only two in the company that really knows what a PM does; but I’m completely jazzed about the opportunity.

Jeff, my manager is the VP of R&D and worked at Microsoft for 8 years on the SQL, Windows, and MBF teams (if you know what MBF is and don’t work for Microsoft, you should probably get out more). Very smart, creative and demanding guy. Definitely a big part of the reason I took the job.

Should be fun.