Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Breakfast: a banana, a nectarine, toast with margarine. Student computing committee meeting. Spent most of the day finishing the reformatting of Joel's computer. Everything seems to be done now, and his Palm Pilot is now synched with Outlook. Lunch: roast cow with cheddar sandwich from home, a banana, a fig bar. PalmOne (aka Pa1mOne) angered me again today because their software requires that you install as admin but this doesn't work properly because I'll log in as admin and then install and then upon restarting it and logging in as the end user no icons show up. If I log out and then log in as admin, I'll see the Palm Desktop icons and Start Menu shortcuts that I was expecting. Sure, the CD jacket says it requires admin privileges to install, but this means very little to admins who simply do not want to give admin privileges to end users. On the Palm website, Solution ID: 39880 describes the correct procedure for giving administrative rights to users except when you're in a domain environment (as we are). Here is what I would add to that document if I were a Palm representative: You do not need to permanently give your users admin privileges, but their account does need admin privileges during the software installation. Give them admin privileges, install the software, then remove the admin privileges. If your computer is a member of a domain: 1. Choose Start > Run. 2. Enter compmgmt.msc /s. 3. Open Computer Management > System Tools > Local Users and Groups > Groups. 4. Double-click the Administrators group. 5. Select the Add button. 6. Enter the domain account name for the end user that will be needing Palm Desktop. 7. Select OK twice. 8. Close Computer Management. 9. Restart the computer. 10. Install Palm Desktop using the CD-ROM included with your Palm Pilot. During installation, the installer asks you to restart the computer. 11. After restarting the computer and verifying that Palm Desktop is working correctly, you may log in as admin, reopen Computer Management, and remove administrator privileges from the end user account that is using Palm Desktop.—Let's also point out that the URL to Solution ID: 39880 is 122 characters long. Heaven help the poor souls in Palm Technical Support! What's wrong with http://palmone.com/go/39880 which is only 27 characters long? I also—again—ran into the problem where Palm would appear to synchronize successfully but when I go look in Outlook none of the calendar dates from the Palm Pilot appear. The cause of this problem is that it's synching with Palm Desktop not Microsoft Outlook. If you open Palm Desktop, do you see the synched information you were expecting? The solution to this problem is to reinsert the original CD and somewhere in the software there's a way to switch between synching with Palm Desktop and Microsoft Outlook. As I mentioned a few days ago, it would be a whole lot simpler if the Palm software installed possible connections with everything from the start and let you choose what you want from one simple interface. (Why do I need to open Palm Desktop to delete a user? Why can't I do that from HotSync Manager?) Helped Chris reinstall a browser plugin for viewing floorplans. After registering my Mac Mini with Apple a week or two ago, they offered me 6 months of MacWorld for free. I normally don't read magazines, but I thought this would be a nice way for me to get my feet wet with Mac stuff again. After signing up on the web for the offer, I immediately submitted my requests that MacWorld not share, rent, or sell my contact information with other parties. This process of opting out is usually hidden in the lines and lines and lines of text describing a company's privacy policy. Nowadays I'm more careful who gets my contact information, and those that do are immediately told that it's not to be shared. Imagine my surprise when I receive a message 3 days later from Janine at cdsboone@cdsfulfillment.com saying, "You may receive some advertising mail because the lists are rented in advance of the mailings, but be assured that your name has been removed from future advertising lists." So I replied, "Hi Janine, Thanks for your message. So even if I just signed up and I *immediately* tell you I don't want any additional advertising then I might still get additional advertising? How does that work, exactly? You say, 'the lists are rented in advance of the mailings'—do you mean to say that in the 30 seconds between me signing up and me telling you I don't want any additional advertising my contact information has already been rented? If so, that will make for interesting news in my blog. Please let me know." Tammi replied 5 days later with: "Your order was processed on August 13, 2005. We received your email request on August 16, 2005, therefore, we were not able to remove your name from advertising 'immediately' as you had requested. The Website is based out of San Francisco and the magazine fulfillment center is in Boone, Iowa. Since your order was processed through the Internet, we did not receive your request 'the same day' at our magazine fulfillment center. We hope this explains why there was a delay in processing your request. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you." Dinner at home with Patrick: fried chicken boob, mushrooms, salad, leftover angel hair. Watched Simpsons episodes.