BrownStudies » Tools/Tips/Tricks

Using Keyboard Maestro to fix Safari 5.1 keyboard dumbnesses

brownstudy — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 01:27:57 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The MikeBook has been receiving tons of app upgrades due to Lion (haven’t upgraded yet; waiting a few months for the bugs to shake out).

In general, the app upgrades have caused no problem except for Safari, which disabled the Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys. I mean…what?? Sorry, Apple, but I don’t have a Magic Trackpad, and I still use my quaint little keyboard to navigate through my web pages.

Fortunately, a poster to this thread on the Apple support forum provided the secret handshake:

COMMAND UP ARROW takes you to top of page
COMMAND DOWNARROW takes you to bottom of page
OPTION UPARROW takes you up a page
OPTION DOWNARROW takes you down a page

So, using the wonderfulness that is Keyboard Maestro, I remapped my Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys to the above keystrokes. Now, I can use my keyboard the way God (and not Apple) intended.

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Assorted links

brownstudy — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:17:42 +0000

“The truth is dancers and musicians live in two different worlds.”
For academic writers, the Rule of 200. Writing 200 words/day is rather like writing for 15 minutes/day — it sets an objective, emotionally neutral goal. Getting that first draft squeezed out is most important; quality can be layered in later. Also, this raises the task from a “special project” (I only write when I’m inspired or when I think I have time) to a routine that one doesn’t have to think about doing — you just sit down to do it. I would like to find a similar metric for editing a document, but maybe minutes per day is the best metric there.

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Readability and toread.cc bookmarklets

brownstudy — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:35:46 +0000

Here are two bookmarklets I use every day. (Bookmarklets, you ask? What are they? More here.)

The beautiful thing about bookmarklets is they should work from within IE, Firefox, Safari, or any web browser that lets you put a bookmark in its Links bar.

Because I read lots of articles and blogs online, I click the Readability bookmarklet a lot. (In fact, it’s the rightmost link on my Links bar in both my work and home browsers.) Lifehacker has a good mini-explanation with video of what it does, but essentially the Readability bookmarklet strips out all the page and font formatting and presents just the text, sans background, affiliate links, banner ads, etc. Select the settings you want on the Readability site, drag the bookmarklet to your Links bar, and away you go. As Lifehacker notes, it’s not perfect, but it gets the formatting right for me about 98% of the time.

Yes, some web sites like NY Times or New Yorker have printer-friendly pages, but they’re not always reader-friendly pages. With the Readability-formatted page in the browser, I can quickly read a narrower column of text on a gray background, which my eyes find more restful than glaring white.

I can also print the reformatted page, which looks great, or save it to PDF. I generally prefer the Readability version over any web site’s printer-friendly version.

I also like using the Readability bookmarklet with my toread bookmarklet. The toread.cc site bills itself as an “email-based free bookmark service.” Which is accurate but sounds klunky. Delicious, which I use heavily, is also a free bookmark service. (I don’t use browser bookmarks anymore; it feels so ’90s.) But Delicious doesn’t let me search the contents of the pages I’ve saved, so I should make good notes or provide good tags that will enable me to find the link again later.

What I use toread.cc for is as a way to archive web-page receipts, web pages with information I may want to access again someday, or web pages I may want to read later. When I’m on a page that has text I want to keep, I click the toread bookmarklet, and the entire page is emailed to my Gmail account. (I specified my Gmail address when I signed up for the service.)

Because I use Gmail, I can now search the full text of these saved pages and generally find what I want pretty quickly–which is the chief advantage of using this method over Delicious. Using toread is a way to build up a personal web archive in a painless fashion.

I don’t store everything I read online using toread and Gmail, only stuff that I think I’d like to hold on to “just in case” (which is the clutterer’s curse). If I’m doing lots of web-based research on a topic, then I’ll use Delicious to group a large number of sites under a single tag and harvest the sites later. More likely, if I read a poem from Poetry Daily or an essay I particularly like or a computer tip I want to have on hand, then I’ll use toread.

When used with Readability, the toread service helps me to archive clean-looking pages that don’t have billboard/classified-ad clutter that permeates web and blog design these days. (And my toread bookmarklet is on the leftmost side of my Links bar, so I don’t accidentally click it when I really want to click the Readability bookmarklet.) (Do I like to complicate my life with these rules, or what?)

I don’t trust that pictures or graphics are saved via toread; I think they’re included as links in the email. If the original site goes down, then it would take the graphics or pictures with it. So I tend to focus on text-based material.

Incidentally, I sometimes find that when I go back to read pages I emailed to myself, I’ve sometimes lost interest in them and wondered why I thought I wanted to read them. These tend to be deep-dish think-pieces from Arts & Letters Daily. So, using toread provides cooling-off time between “Ooh! New thing! Must read! Must distract myself!” and “Hmpf. Why did I save that?”

Another reasonable objection to using toread could be, “Aren’t you just junking up your Gmail?” Maybe. I have a filter that labels every email from toread.cc as “Later.” So, yes, there are many to-be-read emails in the “Later” bin, but they can be filtered out of searches or I can search only within the “Later” bin; both options allow me to narrow my focus as needed.

I also feel that, geez, don’t we already know how to delete, sort, or file emails? Could it be any easier? Try sorting and deleting Delicious bookmarks; it’s better these days but not as easy as email. Email, for better or worse, is the world’s most oft-used app (no matter the application nor whether it’s web-based or computer-based) that, presumably, most people already know how to use. Why not push the stuff I want to read or do through my email application? It prevents me from having to learn a new application and, filing-wise, I now have one place to search for that needle in the haystack, instead of several different services (or the whole web, for that matter).

Note: I see that toread also offers a service called news.toread.cc, that uses data collected from the toread.cc service to show what people are bookmarking. It’s rather like Delicious’s home page showing what people are bookmarking. Just pointing this out if security is an issue.

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Annoying Firefox problem fixed

brownstudy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:09:12 +0000

For the last couple of months, I’ve had an incredibly annoying problem in Firefox, when entering text into text boxes: the cursor would disappear, the text box would appear to lock up, and I’d have to click inside the text box to resume typing. Often, too, I’d hit the Backspace key and this would jump me back to a previous page, causing me to lose what I’d been writing.

I did several searches on this problem and finally located the answer here. I had set several bookmarks in my beloved Speed Dial extension to automatically update every hour or every four hours, etc. For my Gmail, I had it ping my inbox every few minutes. It was these dial-outs that robbed the focus from the text boxes: as I typed, Speed Dial was checking a web site and updating the thumbanil, and Firefox — unable to serve two masters — left me bereft.

Not wanting to disable Speed Dial, I instead set the bookmark updates to Never, and this seems to be working.

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2 VMWare Fusion tips

brownstudy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:40:03 +0000

I’ve enjoyed having VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, as it’s made the transition from a PC to a Mac easier. Also, since I now have only the MacBook, I’m able to easily duplicate what I had on the old PC and to edit work documents on my copy of Microsoft Office.

But I hit a few roadblocks the other night (on deadline, of course), so thought I’d document their solutions here.

I had installed a lot of Windows apps and got the warning that there was only about 1GB of hard drive space left on the virtual disk. I thought I’d allocated enough room, but 10GB wasn’t enough. I went into Fusion’s Settings and allocated 20GB. No dice. Still didn’t work. But this excellent tutorial video on the Fusion site shows step-by-step how to create a virtual disk that will grow as the VM grows.
I’d hoped to save my files in one place only on my Mac, and not have to store files in both my Mac and Windows environments. But from within Windows, opening those shared folders was painfully slow and so I reconciled myself to having two separate sets of files to manage. BUT. A search through the VMWare Fusion Forum offered a user’s solution that hit the nail on the head: the Avast anti-virus software in Windows was causing the slowdown. Add the Fusion shared folders to Avast’s exclusion list so it doesn’t attempt to scan any files it finds there. With that setting in place, opening Mac files from within Windows is as quick as opening them from the Finder. At last, I can have one set of documents in one place.
No better time to promote Joe Kissell’s newest e-book, Take Control of VMware Fusion 2. These Take Control books are inexpensive and the best way to get acquainted with Macs.

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Writing research papers

brownstudy — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:51:56 +0000

First in a (no doubt about it) ongoing series.

When I had to do my first literature review, and my first big grad school paper, last fall, I asked my mentor, The Indomitable Cassidy, for her advice. Here’s what she said:

I actually like starting with a “haphazard search,” but I prefer to start in the e-research tools box, rather than the e-journals box. As you may already know, if you click on the Information and Library Science subject area, you will get various resources, such as LISA, Library Lit, and ACM Digital Lib. It would be good to run a general search in each of those databases, just to see what is out there. Then you will have a better vocabulary to go back and do some more thorough searches.
I also like to do the “follow the citation trail” method, in which you find one good trusty generalist literature review on your subject area, then skim the citations for relevant articles. Go to that lit-review article, read its citation list, and keep following until you really hit a gold mine.
Also, if you are new to the subject area, it’s worth it to grab someone’s CV that you know is in that area (such as your professor) and see where she has published. Then you can go directly to that journal and skim for relevant articles.
Also, don’t let yourself get carried away and start reading all the material you come across! You have to be industrious about this–try to make a decision from the abstract on whether or not it will be useful. Use the abstracts to develop a skeleton of your product. Then go back and really read things to flesh out your literature review. (I like to skim things and put a 3×5 card on them saying what topical/methodological area they cover, then put them in piles, then go back and only work on that pile to come up with a cohesive 2-3 paragraphs about that sub-topic or method in my lit. review. Then I work out all the transition material later on.)
[In answer to my question of her workflow and how she tracked the online pages she found] Actually, I print out all documents that I think might be relevant (from the abstract), then as I read/skim them I make the notes on 3X5s and then sort (so I am sorting the actual documents). And then I write. It’s a bit of a tedious project, but it worked for my master’s paper.

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Storing Nuggets of Information

brownstudy — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:49:46 +0000

The following are comments I left on the high-fun personal blog PigPog. Back in 2005, Michael wrote a post on storing and retrieving nuggets of information. This invited a couple of unedited brain-dumps from your Humble Correspondent.

I’m posting them here because my original links to the post were broken after a site redesign and I would not want to lose them again. Also, since I’m in info-school, they seemed appropriate to post here. As these posts are from 2005, I’ve naturally moved on and made changes to my routines, but they’re a good snapshot of my thought and habits from that time.

A few things come to mind:

Other writers: From his essays, I twigged that Martin Gardner kept drawers of index cards, meticulously cross-indexed, with relevant articles or snippets from his reading paper-clipped to them. He’d draw on these when writing his books/essays.

The New Yorker magazine also had a legendary cross-indexed 3×5 index card catalog of the magazine’s contents going back to the founding. Their insurance company identified the index cards as a risk, which led them to move to a database, and then to scan in the issues, and then to release the magazine’s contents on DVD (I’m getting them for Christmas). The 3×5 card system has now been abandoned. (Read this in a NY Times article and an interview on NPR.)

Journalist James Fallows (who worked with Msft on the development of OneNote, I think, esp from a journalist’s perspective) is a computer buff from way back. He touted the use of old DOS programs like Grandview (outliner program to help him organize his stories) and Lotus Agenda (”a spreadsheet for words,” which had pretty amazing natural-language processing of text on the fly– Google on that and breathe in the nostalgia). He used Agenda to collect snippets of everything, create categories and views on the fly, and essentially keep track of his research and notes.

Nowadays, he uses Brainstorm and Mindmanager, and who knows what all.

The novelist Robertson Davis kept a writer’s notebook of ideas, characters, etc (near to my heart as a writer). He numbered each page, and each entry on a page got a letter. When it came time to write a novel, he noted that entries 9F, 10A, and 12B related to a single character, and he drew the threads together that way.

I’ve also had (and have) the info-packrat disease, which fueled my purchase of Agenda, Infoselect, Ecco Pro, and god knows how many others.

The computer columnist Jim Seymour wrote somewhere, and it made an impression on me, that there is information that likes to be structured — by chronology, by someone’s name, by the alphabet, by location, by function, by program name, whatever — and then there is loose info that you can’t define a container for YET, but that you can’t bear to lose. This has caused me sleepless nights and I debate its core usefulness to me, often.

The 43Folders post on living inside a single text file inspired me to try again at home with Notetab (Windows text editor). It has a simple structuring facility it calls an outline, but which is simply a flat list of topic headings on the left, and the text on the right. I’ve found I prefer the flat headings to hierarchical; they remind me of keeping notes in my Palm Memo (ie, “Books/Loaned to,” “Books/Library,” etc). it’s also like spreading everything out on a table so I can scan it quickly; nothing is hidden underneath another topic; everything is on the surface.

Lately, I’m trying to bookmark less often, save info less often, UNLESS I have a specific project in mind. In that case, I create the folders/structures to contain that info and the info naturally adheres to it.

At work, I use a dead-simple program called Electric Notebook (http://lincoln.midcoast.com/~ian/notebook.html), a very personal (ie, idiosyncratic) program with few of the amentities of OneNote, except that it can sit open all day, I type stuff in as it occurs to me, with (I hope) the right keywords, and then I search on it as I need to. Which is never as often as I think. It’s an electronic logbook, basically. It’s based on just keeping stuff chronologically, but in a rough-and-ready fashion. I find that it’s dumbed-down enough to suit my simple needs very nicely. I find, though, that I use it at home less than I use Notetab.

For structured info at work, I use an OpenOffice Writer document to simulate Word’s Document Map function (which is similar to Notetab’s outline function — is there a pattern??). This document is called “infoindex” and holds various Unix commands, checklists, timecard chargecodes, etc., that demand to be stored and used as reference, not stuff that’s part of the passing scene. Stuff I input into Notebook that’s worth remembering or referring back to more than once gets migrated to the infoindex.

I find this two-pronged approach works well for me. Electric Notebook for unstructured info, Infoindex for structured info. And it’s a simple enough process that I can use it when I’m distracted or under the weather.

I would also refer you to the c2.com wiki’s entires on LogBook (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LogBook) and ElectronicLogBook (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ElectronicLogBook).

Sorry for the long post! But this is a big interest of mine.

Mike

Oh, and another cs.com link to Programmers Notebook, which includes a list of best practices: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ProgrammersNotebook

Hi Michael — … I’ve always been a fan of commonplace books, don’t know why. I keep a Word file that I dump them into, and at end of year I print it out and put it in a “Commonplace” folder; the folder also holds hard copy I come across that I want to preserve.

See, information packrat

I bought Brainstorm and have tried it a couple of times, but it also doesn’t click with me. I’ll probably try it again; I like trying out idiosyncratic programs made by developers at home. Notebox Disorganizer is another oddity; the UI is basically a spreadsheet grid, but each cell is a cubbyhole in which you can dump your information. The Editorium newsletter had a neat description of how he uses it; scroll down to “Resources.”

Mindmaps are more fun to hand draw and noodle with, IMO, than the software-based ones. Too much cognitive overhead and time spent getting it just right on the ‘puter, when a good-enough handdrawn one will help sort out your thinking.

There’s also Evernote, if you’ve not tried it. It’s been getting some good buzz.

Yes, Agenda was Kapor’s brainchild, and he’s now working on something called Chandler, supposedly another info mgmt tool. Agenda still has quite a loyal following.

So much software, so little value from so much of it. I wonder if, in a world of less software meant to save time and improve my life, I’d have read more books.

I think software is sometimes best used for a specific project or purpose, not as something to live in. That’s why I like the idea of the single text file approach — Google has taught us that categorization is not vital if you have full text search. And there’s little in my personal life that requires the full categorization that I need in my workplace.

Still, I’m one of those people who like to file and make categories, so it comes naturally to me. I remember something I read a long time ago, that humans (esp computer people) tend to leap for the complicated solution first, thinking of all the exceptions that have to be trapped, and so on. In reality, a good-enough system will probably work and you only should handle exceptions as they arise.

This is why I’ve drifted away from all-in-one software solutions, because I find I tend not to think of them as easy to use as a pencil or a text editor. (I daresay PigPog is an attempt to simplify GTD in the same way.) I also think that’s the value of the weekly review, to refresh those brain synapses about what’s out there. You can’t remember everything, but if you can remember where you put it, then that’s just as good. As the Extreme Programming guys say, do the simplest thing that could possibly work.

You probably read/heard about the researcher who used DevonThink as his commonplace book/dumping ground for bits of text. He had an assistant type in lots of stuff and then Devon searched around and made unusual connections the writer would not have thought of. But the time cost of doing something like that is prohibitive to me. And as you say, what if the software never progresses (like Agenda or Ecco)?

Sorry for another long post! I find this kind of discussion hits on things I’ve tried to figure out in my own life/work.

All best — mike

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Write what you feel

brownstudy — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 04:06:53 +0000

Advice for the creative writer, yes. But the student? My manager is taking a summer class and his teacher told the class, “Don’t write down what I say. Write down what you feel about what I say.” Interesting advice for a note-taker who’s thinking about regurgitating the content for the next test.

My reporting background feeds into my natural tendencies to observe and notate, to somehow duplicate what I’m reading or listening to in class; it’s distancing. Paraphrasing what the teacher says during a lecture is a good idea, but the cognitive load of paraphrasing something said a minute ago in my own words as new content is also streaming in is too much for me.

But I like the idea of recording my reactions in class, even if they’re baffled. It’s fast, it’s in the moment, it hooks me. Engage me on the emotional level, and I’m halfway there. That said, I can see this strategy applying more to issues-oriented topics than information retrieval algorithms. But it’s a new tool I definitely want to try out this fall.

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Too soon old, too late shmart…

brownstudy — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:23:21 +0000

…goes the old Yiddish proverb. And it works for the spring semester as well as for real life.

Using a simple 1-inch binder and two sets of five tabs were fantastic in helping me organize my two classes’ syllabi, assignments, special handouts, and so on. I could carry it with me to work and school, I kept drafts of papers or sections of papers organized, and it just neatened up my work.
I also used the DIY Planner Two-Page Per Month calendar to keep at the front of the binder. I recorded due dates here. I also like being able to grok the month at a glance.
I used two large Moleskine cahiers as my notebooks for each class. This meant juggling two different notebooks, and I would occasionally pick up the wrong one. Next semester: use a Mead two-subject notebook and be done with it.
Some days I took lots of notes in class, other days few to none. Hence, I now have two half-empty Moleskine cahiers. Hence, using the Mead two-subject notebook to keep the damage to one notebook instead of two.
At the start of the semester, I also used the notebooks to record my reading notes. I found the notes helpful sometimes, especially as they fixed ideas in my head. However, as the semester ground on, I had less time available to record my thoughts and so that activity slowed and sputtered. Also, it was mainly useful to grasp the heart of what was discussed, note any unusual detail or anecdote, and skim the rest.
As always: there’s more time at the start of the semester than there is at the end.
I’ve tried using the Little-and-often/ESS method and it worked sometimes. (It’s also likely that I implemented these strategies wrongly–ie, not often enough and not little enough–or didn’t stick with them long enough.) When I’m starting a paper, I’ll also timebox the research task or use the Now Habit’s 30 minutes of quality work trick. But I’m still thinking too much about the method and that interferes with doing the work. For example, I started using Cal’s research paper database in Excel for an early paper and it was excellent for getting me started. But then I got in a time crunch and I abandoned it. I’m still keeping the idea in my back pocket, though, as it’s a killer way to organize bunches of citations.
For my last batch of assignments (a UI critique and a paper), I borrowed a leaf from Steve Pavlina: I picked an assignment and just worked full bore on it until it was done. (Go here and scroll down to the “Single Handling” section.) And when it was sufficiently done, I moved on to the next assignment and worked full bore on that until it was sufficiently done. And so on. (By “sufficiently done,” I mean “good enough.” I like keeping a paper around for a couple of days to cool off, review it, and polish things a little more, add more texture to thicken it, etc. I find this re-reading and polishing takes little time or brain energy.) In fact, I was astonished at how well I took to this method and how quickly I achieved results with it. I got two deliverables done well before the due dates and had an unhurried weekend to finish my taxes and do my readings for the week. It also alleviates the problem I have with setting artificial deadlines which I can see right through; with this method, there are no deadlines, just a sufficiently done project.
Start all major projects earlier. Don’t wait for later. Be kind to your future self. ‘Nuff said.
Parking in the deck behind the Post Office is great at 8:30, and it gives me plenty of time to grab a coffee before class. Yay! No more waiting for the bus! I didn’t discover this till the middle of the semester. However, it does cost about $3 a pop and uses more gas than taking the bus, so I’ll probably use this only now and then.
Having the upcoming week’s work and readings done by the previous Sunday evening leads to peace and contentment when the week starts, and no rushing about at the last minute.
I had two folders for each class that would contain the week’s readings; as with the cahier notebooks, I’d sometimes get the folders mixed up. Also, they’d contain more printouts than I really needed for one day’s class. I’ll fix this with a staggeringly simple tip I glimpsed on a bus passenger’s lap one day: Label the folders by day instead of by class. That way, each day’s work is pre-sorted, I don’t need to think about which folder to take, and badda-bing–Bob’s your uncle.
When working on an assignment: re-read or maybe even type out precisely the directions, the expectations, requirements, etc. I often go off on a tangent and make the process and the final product more complicated than it needs to be. I frequently re-read my last two assignments with the focus of a Talmudic scholar, ensuring that I was delivering exactly what was asked for and not something other than what was asked for.
I tried creating a Google Calendar schedule (like Proto-scholar’s) that delineated my commute times, class times, work schedule, etc. I never went back to it. I like my daily planner and 2-page-per-month too much. But a recent idea of Cal’s–the auto-pilot schedule–I find gobsmackingly simple and brilliant and why the hell didn’t I think of it myself? In fact, Pavlina’s “focus on one project at a time” melded nicely with a standard day/time to work on these projects. Making these kinds of decisions ahead of time really reduces the friction of getting this work done. Given that I work full-time in addition to taking two classes, I find it necessary to designate whole evenings to one class or the other. During crunch times, I may institute emergency measures. But I think in the fall, I’ll designate general class-work for specific evenings and periods of weekend time, and then work in the special projects as needed.

As I think of more, I’ll add more.

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Jumping the gun on a MacBook?

brownstudy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:28:57 +0000

Although UNC requires incoming freshmen to buy a laptop computer, and although some SILS classes require a laptop (I’m thinking here of the database or programming courses), by and large, I’ve found that I haven’t really needed a laptop on campus. I prefer taking notes by hand on paper, and the campus is lousy with workstations where I can check my email, which is what most people do anyway. Most of my homework and papers I prefer to write on my home PC, simply because it’s already customized for my peculiar needs.

Nevertheless, since I entered the program, I felt a burning urgency to purchase a laptop–I’m falling behind! All the other kids have a laptop! I’m feeling left out!–and took advantage of a pretty good deal at the campus computer store to buy a black MacBook with the eerie glowing ghost-apple on the lid. I added an extra gig of RAM and donated the printer that came with it to a charitable organization. So, no worries there.

I also bought several of the Take Control ebooks to learn some more about the Mac. I tried out various backpacks, briefcases, and sheathes. I bought a Bluetooth mouse. I dedicated a spot to it on my desk where it sits and recharges.

And where it still sits, mostly unused. It’s a fine machine, but I just haven’t needed to use it.

The new MacBooks are now arriving with Leopard, which means that’s another expense I’ll have when I decide to upgrade the OS. Fortunately, I’ve bought no other software to install on it, so the hard drive and OS are still pristine, making the upgrade easier, I should think. Thinking more calmly now, I should have waited to buy till Leopard was pre-installed on all MacBooks.

It’s clear to me now, looking back, that I had induced a panic state in myself over this issue and reason’s sweet song would ne’er enter my ear. I took out a loan from the bank in order to pay for both my spring semester tuition and the MacBook, so paying that back every week is a constant reminder of getting too far ahead of myself.

Update: I wrote the above over a couple of days last week. This past Saturday, I decided to reinstall XP on my home PC, after dithering on that decision for a while. The reinstall went fine–except that Windows couldn’t see the second internal hard drive, which holds all of my install files for my other software. I verified that the BIOS could see the drive but XP remained willfully blind. I schlepped the PC to Intrex (where I’d bought the PC in 2006 or so) for them to diagnose and (I hope) fix.

I didn’t enter a panic state on this snafu, interestingly enough. I took the precautions of backing up my volatile data to my external USB drive and to the cloud, so they’re accessible if I need them.

And, need I say, I had a laptop–an underused MacBook on which I could check my mail, finish my homework assignment due on the following Monday, and store info on my paper that’s due in 2 weeks. Funny how these things work out.

Addendum: Back up those drivers, kids! And print out your Device Manager settings! I should have inserted the motherboard CD and installed the RAID and sound drivers; that’s why Windows couldn’t see the second internal hard drive. OK, that goes on the master checklist for reinstalling Windows…

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