Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Old laptop maintenance: Microsoft Updates, Firefox update, disk cleanup, defrag. Helped Scott with a problem in Outlook 2007 in which he would assign a named category to a calendar item but it would not be colored the color that that category was colored. The problem occurred when right-clicking a calendar item and selecting the category from the popup menu that appears. If we selected All Categories from the popup menu and assigned the category using the Color Categories dialog, the problem did not occur, but this was much less convenient when there clearly exists functionality to do so via the popup menu. After the category was assigned but the proper color did not appear, we'd right-click the item, open the Color Categories dialog (formerly known as the Master Category List) and "(Not in Master Category List)" would appear next to the name of his category with the box selected and no color specified. After several minutes of troubleshooting, the only way I could find to resolve the problem was to create a new category called the same thing as the old category, assign the same color, and assign all items categorized with the old category to the new category and also remove the old category from those items. This problem is, in my opinion, a design flaw with Outlook in general and Outlook 2007—there shouldn't be a need for a "master category list"—categories that are created should automatically be added to the global "master category list" without a distinction between local and global categories. I think people don't care about local versus global categories—they just want it to work and the easiest way to do this (given Outlook's current situation) is to make all categories global. John K launched the new OAAIS website yesterday, so I did a bit of linkchecking—no major problems. Helped Carol and Cindy with Office 2007 document compatibility issues. Lunch: leftovers at desk. Disabled caching on some network shared folders. New hire followup. LGBT viz work. More document troubleshooting for Betty-ann and Barbara. Uninstalled Office 2003 from both shared laptops and installed Office 2007 and latest updates. Calendar and other minor web edits. Reviewed and approved cdrom proof. Disk cleanup and defrag for both shared laptops. Printed a binder cover and spine. Dinner at home with Patrick: salmon with ginger scallion sauce, Annie's peace pasta with parmesan cheese, corn off the cob with bell peppers medley. Watched The Animatrix on DVD with Patrick. Dessert: leftover lemon cake for me only. (Patrick tried it yesterday and didn't like it—he doesn't like lemon desserts.)