Geeky outlook script

Do you ever get that thing where for some unknown reason you can’t turn off your head and get to sleep? Well, I do. Sometimes when I am there, I sit down at my computer and take care of something on my next actions list. Helps me feel like I have accomplished something, gets it off my mind and allows me to sleep. Sometimes I end up being awake for longer.

I have been known to check my e-mail in the middle of the night (probably not a good idea, really). Sometimes I will respond to e-mails that are waiting, never mind the hour. This in itself is not so bad, except that sometimes people notice that I have been sending e-mails in the middle of the night (note the timestamp on this posting). I have been setting the “send e-mail later” option, so as to not appear like a work-aholic. But I’m human, sometimes I don’t remember.

Enter VBA Scripting for Outlook. Say what you like about Outlook, and there’s plenty to say, but the geek in me is enjoying the scripting functionality lately. I wrote my own Outlook script (very little code theft here – except from the help file, which I feel is legit), which checks the time at which I am sending a message and if it’s between midnight and 8:00 am, viola…I get this pop-up: I bet you can figure out what happens when I push each button. Another effective “smart part of the brain” tricking the “dumb part of the brain” tool. Yayy.

(If you are also a geek and want to know how to do this, ask, and I will gladly share the code I wrote)

Who’s got the most…Baggage?

I was thinking the other day about political baggage. You know, we’ve got this primary coming up, here in Pennsylvania. I really like both Hillary and Barack for different reasons. I have been trying to find something that will help me make up my mind, between them. It has occurred to me that with experience comes baggage, and maybe we could do with a little less of that. My mind wandered back to the Clinton Whitehouse years, and a few of the scandals that went on. Now you can’t really paint Hillary with the Monica Lewinsky scandal per say. Some folks will try to take her on for her actions in the wake of that scandal, but I don’t feel vitriolic enough to go there.

Does anyone remember whitewater though? I know nothing really stuck to the Clintons too hard on that one, but both of them were implicated. Surely some of the implications were spun by their opposition. But I would be easily convinced that there was something shady going on there, and that the Clintons have some of it on them as well.

Then the other day I finally got around to watching Fahrenheit 9/11. Talk about your baggage. A dynastic family with WAY too many business interests to possibly run the country without phenomenal conflict of interest. So, though I like some of what Hillary has to say, I wonder whom she is beholden too, and am a little leery.

Plus, I really liked Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech.. I guess I’m leaning his way currently. We’ll see how this ends up.

Air Travel today – another industry in need of better scheduling

I write today from the comfort of an exit row seat on a Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis. This is one of the first flights I have taken in quite a while where which wasn’t over 80% capacity. This allowed me to move to the exit row affording me the room between myself and the seat in front of me to use my laptop, as well as putting some space in between me and the screaming baby that was in the row behind my assigned seat. Boy did I feel bad for that mom flying alone trying to comfort her child, obviously acutely aware of the disruption her child’s crying was making. Been there. Overfull flights, cramped seating, crying children. These are pretty standard air travel complaints, hardly worth making.

This is my 5th flight in two weeks, the third of which was delayed. Annoying as that is, it is also not a new complaint. What is interesting is that today’s flight was delayed by 20 minutes, just as last Sunday’s flight was delayed by an hour, due to “mandatory crew rest period.” I am sure this is not a new regulation. I am sure that other flights have been delayed for the same reason. I am also positive that this is a good reason to keep a plane on the ground. FAA mandatory Pilot rest is every bit as important as DOT mandatory Truck Driver rest. There are probably a few other things for which mandated rest would not be a bad idea. But I digress.

What sticks in my craw is that this is a delay that is completely avoidable through more careful scheduling. Someone in the NWA crew scheduling department needs to 1) take a class in Critical Path Management, and 2) build in slightly larger cushions to allow for schedule pinches caused by the inevitable weather delays. I know that money is tight in the airline industry today, for many reasons. However, Northwest will lose customers if it can’t more reliably schedule its flights and crews. I for one will avoid further Northwest flights, assuming I have a reasonable option on another carrier. At present I have three more flights booked before Valentines Day with Northwest. We’ll see if they can redeem themselves at all, and whether this delay will cause either me or my checked luggage to miss the connecting flight out of Minneapolis.

Clever donor ploy or privatizing of the pubic airways?

I am a long-time free-loading listener to WDUQ, the local NPR station. Actually a number of years ago, Mrs Bob and I were members. However, a few years back as we were moving to a new house, money got very tight around our household, and we cut back on a bunch of our charitable giving (along with other more frivolous things like movies, eating out, etc).

WDUQ is in its pledge drive mode again (groan). I know they have to do this to stay afloat. But I can’t stand listening to it, whether I am a member or not. For a long time now, I have listened to Morning Edition on the web, to avoid listening to the pledge drive. If Morning Edition is not available, which it sometimes is not, I listen to WFCR in Amherst MA, WAMC in Albany NY, or KUNI in Cedar Fall IA, all on the web.

We aren’t “flush” now. However, money isn’t as tight as it was. I am thinking that I will probably renew our membership in this valuable non-profit resource. I feel a liberal need to be a charitable donor to this and other worthy causes. It’s got me thinking however:

WDUQ does some of its regular programming stuff, even during the pledge drive: Local News, weather and traffic, and occasional cutaways to morning edition. In these days of secure websites that can be logged into, I see the potential for a value added member benefit. They could play their own content in real time when they would normally play it within the NPR programming. They could cutaway to those things from the pledge drive as they do now, just on the NPR schedule. This way they could offer their members an internet stream that is their regular programming with no pledge drive annoyance. They could pick a donation level that might encourage people to up their donation to access this benefit. I’d do it.

So, is this a good benefit to encourage donations to a non-profit that needs the cash? Or is this the first step towards privatizing part of public radio for the people who can afford it? I’m conflicted.

My challenge for the Comcast installer

We have a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) cable box. Actually this is our second. We used to have one when we had dish network in our old house too. It's been a few years since we have watched regular TV with commercials. Anyway over the past week, the cable box/DVR has been on the fritz, "resetting" itself. This has had an added annoying effect. See the cable box has a convenience outlet on the back of it, into which you can plug other things. When I followed the extension cord plugged into that outlet, I discovered that it was my wireless router, and network hub that were plugged into that outlet. This means that every time the cable box “reset,” my computer network wired and wireless would also power cycle. Uggg.

After a rather annoying half hour with a Comcast technician talking me through some troubleshooting (most of which I had already done), she finally agreed that I needed a service call, which we scheduled for last Saturday. Owing to some brain fart, at the exact time the technician was scheduled to come I was off taking my child to dance class. This left Mrs. Bob alone at home to deal with the tech. Now Mrs. Bob is not tech-dumb. In fact she’s pretty smart. However, our AV installation is a little geekier in setup than she can follow. Apparently she’s no the only one.

So, I got a call when the tech was nearly done. They were having trouble with the remote control of all things. Seemed the tech concurred that we needed a new box, which he had apparently already installed. I was surprised to hear that he didn’t need phone help from me earlier (note geek warning above). This is where I was happily surprised to hear about the inventiveness of the tech. Apparently he was a little surprised by the installation as well. So much so, that he took a picture of the back of my cable box with his cell phone, so that he would be sure to hook things back up correctly.

If you ask me there was nothing really unusual about what was plugged into the back of the cable box. However I am glad he bothered to take the picture. Box correctly replaced. Woo hoo! So, would you have wanted a picture? Or is it the receiver below the cable box which is really scary?
Who’s the Geek now?

Confirmation of yesterdays question

Okay. For quite a while now, I have encountered students that I teach (yes even graduate level students) who weren’t even born when I graduated High School. I try to live with that. Growing older is natural, right? Along with age come experience, perspective, and hopefully wisdom right? So I usually don’t dwell on it, but apparently this week, musical memories are my downfall, witness yesterdays U23D post.

Last night Mrs Bob noticed that Billy Joel was coming to town sometime soon. I lost interest in Billy Joel’s music right after the 52nd Street album. Really...”We didn’t start the Fire?” What the %*&! was that? She knows this, and was just tweaking me to see if I was interested in going. But I digress.

After Mrs Bob poked the bear, I started to respond “The last time I saw Billy Joel in concert…” and then my mind quickly not only filled in the blank (1978), but also did the math (just short of 30 years ago). OH MY GOD, and I thought the last time I saw U2 (The War tour) was a long time ago.

Well, I can comfort myself with the fact that while it says something about my age, it says even more about Billy Joel’s age. He was 29 when I saw The Stranger tour in 1978. You do the math.

I am glad I still feel young inside, even though I keep being reminded that I have a longer history of experience than I feel someone my age should.

Am I old, or just a geek?

So I heard this article on NPR yesterday about the new movie U23D. I was captivated by the review, and was instantly eager to see it. There are two things that really grabbed my interest. One: The Music of U2 in a well filmed concert movie. Two: a well done 3-D movie with content aimed at an audience above their teens.

So does this mean that I am old, because I really like U2? Or are younger hipper (as if that's really a word with any contemporary relevance) people interested in U2 these days also. Hmmm. I feel old, just asking that question.

Alternatively, it could just mean that I am a geek. The idea of 3-D movies has always been interesting to me for some inexplicable reason. I even liked the "It's a bugs life" show at Disneyland (or was it California Adventure...whatever), because of its 3-D effects, cheesy as some of them were. Guilty pleasure I guess.

Maybe I am both, if I have to wonder. Oh well. I guess one simply has to embrace what one is. So, if I am an old geek, I am an old geek. But I still want to see U23D. Now I just have to find a local IMAX, and no the science center doesn’t count. That is an OmniMAX theatre, and in my option, IMAX movies are very hard to watch there.