Last night I got Chinese food from the local place and took it home.

After the meal I broke open my fortune cookie. I handed the paper to a friend of mine to read since I didn't have my glasses on and for all I knew I was trying to read it upside down (turns out I was).

I thought my friend was messing with me when he read it out loud.

Anyone have any suggestions at this point? Tin foil hats or garlic or something?

I'm saving this one.

Recently my Outlook 2007 connection to my Google Apps mail account became increasingly slow and sluggish, to the point of extreme frustration. Slow syncs and a general sense of bloat were ruining my experience and making it close to unusable. During email syncs my system would practically hang as Outlook churned away.

Not acceptable. I either needed a solution or I needed to replace my email, contacts and calendaring solution. It was that bad. Now, I really have no desire to leave Outlook. It works great for me. What I needed was a fix, which was preferable to a wholesale replacement. I know Thunderbird works well, but at least for now it's just not an Outlook equal replacement.

So, I searched today for a solution and - what do you know - quickly found an article on Digital Inspiration that helped me clean up my server configuration and improve performance substantially. With the huge onslaught of spam over the past couple months, my GMail spam folder had grown to be HUGE, so removing that from the sync was probably a big deal. Also, I set up the inbox to grab headers only (different than the article suggests). In addition, I disabled a couple unused but active Outlook add-in's as described in this article.

The results? A speedy Outlook and no more hung apps. The sync with the Google IMAP servers is much faster. I actually can't believe I put up with the bad performance as long as I did. All resolved now.

Favor Day is coming on March 12th, and it's being organized on Facebook. Nothing quite like doing something simple and kind for someone else to make the world a better place. You should be a part - spread the word!

Here's how you celebrate Favorday -- on Favorday, March 12th, 2008, you do planned favors for people, just like you would plan on giving a gift to somebody for the holidays. Any kind of favor can suffice, whether its "I'm going to rub my girlfriend's feet" or "I'm going to clean my neighbor's garage" Favorday is for celebrating each other.

You can help by inviting your friends to celebrate Favorday with you!

By the way, I am on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=584484571

It's official: The format war is over.

I'm not one bit ashamed to say I've been a HD-DVD guy ever since I made the shift to watching movies in the amazing world of hi-def last June. I've enjoyed the red label discs, I appreciate the combo-format packages, and it was HD-DVD that pushed me into doing a lot of research into 1080p projectors and then purchasing one that I have been very happy with.

I also bought a HD-DVD player for my dad and his significant other's new home the day after thanksgiving, and another one for my mom and step dad over the Christmas holiday. If nothing else, they play regular DVDs on their hi-def (1080p) sets beautifully. Too bad the HD-DVD format looks like it's officially out. Glad I got good prices and minimized the "damage." I suppose I'll probably be buying replacement hardware soon eh?

At any rate, with Netflix, Wal Mart, an ever-expanding list of film studios, Best Buy and others making announcements about either going exclusive Blu-ray or favoring the format... Well anyhow I have a question. :)

Which Blu-ray players should I be seriously looking at? Is there a no-brainer, best-bang-for-the-buck option out there? I'm not really interested in PS3 games, so swaying me in that direction might be tough. I'm looking for full 1080p coverage via HDMI. I can (and do) hope that a Blu-ray player for the Xbox 360 is in the works, but until that happens I have to see what else is out there, and it's not something I've paid full attention to.

Suggestions?

IBM Internet Security Systems' X-Force has released its annual report outlining the malicious software threat and trending landscape. In a nutshell, things are getting more complicated (landscape-wise) and the impact is becoming more technically complex. Read the report and you can directly glean as well as infer certain facts.

As malware becomes harder and harder to catch in real-time using currently-available technology (a trend that has become quite clear over the past year or more) and as the intent of the malicious software becomes more and more geared toward complete remote system control and access, the potential situation looks - I'll just say it - pretty darned bleak.

It's important to stay up-to-date if you're an IT or Security professional (or hard-core geek). Here are your links:

• The ars technica article: Annual IBM security report paints worrisome picture for 2008 (includes some good side-bar thoughts)
• The full IBM report download (PDF, about 3MB): IBM Internet Security Systems X-Force 2007 Trends Statistics

Quiz in the morning. :)

I have a set of Kenmore HE3 appliances for washing clothing, the matching washer and the dryer of course. I like them a lot and have had them for five years. They've served me well. However, ever since installing a drawer pedestal under both, the washer had taken to frequently hopping and jumping around on the floor while in the spin cycle. It's not a good thing, and I needed a fix.

Luckily after some creative Google work I found this web site: Fixitnow.com, Samurai Appliance Repair Man. It's a blog with lots and lots of entries describing how to resolve common issues with various appliances, including mine. It gave me the information I needed to fix the problem. So I'm bookmarking it here on my blog for the benefit of others and - undoubtedly - for my own future reference.

Thanks, Samurai Repair Guy!