I really love Windows 7 and am happily using it on my primary laptop. The so far the only thing that doesn’t work is my AT&T wireless modem (need to find a driver installer that doesn’t care about the OS version).
One issue that I haven’t liked is the Windows Live Messenger client wants to live in the taskbar with the rest of my running apps instead of the system tray where I’m used to it staying. But I just came across a way to make it work like I want and stay over by the clock in the system tray: compatibility mode!
Here’s what to do:
- Close/exit Messenger
- On your local computer browse to C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Messenger\ (or \Program Files (x86)\ on a 64bit OS install)
- Right-click on msnmsgr.exe and choose Properties
- On the Compatibility tab click the “Run this program in compatibility mode box and choose Windows Vista. Click OK at the bottom.
- Now you can start Messenger again from the Start Menu.
- In the System Tray click on the “Show hidden icons” arrow and then click Customize.
- In the Notification Area Icons dialog find Windows Live Messenger and in the dropdown to the right choose “Show icons and notifications”. Click OK at the bottom.
- There you go! Messenger back in the System Tray!
Credit to www.mess.be for the tip! Unfortunately they don’t have URL’s directly to their posts.
Just wanted to let you all know that I’m still around! 
You may have noticed that I’ve added a couple of links/feeds to the right of this page. The first one is my Twitter account: http://twitter.com/nanovak. I have actually been quite active over there as I find the 140 character short post syncs up well with my usual desire for blogging: oh that would be a cool thought or quote to share.
The other feed is a “link blog” feed of blog posts and articles that I find interesting to share. Some good stuff there! http://feeds.feedburner.com/NathansLinkBlog
I’m starting to get motivate to write a 2008 year in review post, so stay tuned for that.
For now, it’s off to bed to try to get rid of a head cold. Joy.
Just came across this in catching up on TechCrunch posts. Pretty funny revisiting of characters from the old Budweiser commercials from 1999-2002 … eight years later.
That’s from the homepage of www.nytimes.com right now. What’s the most impressive, not the “OBAMA” line. To me the most important is “Racial Barrier Falls in Heavy Turnout”. One of the most proud moments I’ve had in my 31 years. Proud of our country.
Thanks to all who voted. Remember this feeling, what it’s like to play a part in the process. No matter if your choice is victorious or not, it’s PARTICIPATING that’s the key.
And thanks to everyone who finally was able to put the “race card” back in the deck with all the other issues. Especially after living in the South for nearly a decade, it puts a big smile on my face to see Virginia and (at this point in the evening, possibly) North Carolina vote for an African American for the highest office in the land.
As John McCain is saying right now in his concession, let’s all “find ways to come together” to help restore our prosperity, enhance our security, and make this country a better place. “We are all fellow Americans.”
Congratulations America. Job well done.
My wife informed me a couple days ago that my final college loan payment was made a few weeks ago, and we just received an official letter stating the loan is paid off and closed. Wow. At 32 years old I’m finally done with college!
It’s nice to have that paid off, but at the same time it was kind of my last connection with being a decade younger than I am now.
My career seems to be taking me in a more technical direction than I once hoped, and where I used to think that getting my Masters some day was good goal, now I’m not so sure. Sure I could be wrong, but at this point I don’t really see a big benefit.
So here’s to the good old days of just worrying about making it to classes and determining the best strategy for winning a game of Spades at 3am. But at the time, here’s to having a few glasses of a nice merlot while answering the door on Halloween while my wife and daughter are out raking in the goods!
Of course I just thought of another interesting tidbit: I’ve come full circle. When I was in college I thought it would be the coolest thing to work at Microsoft, but knew it was pretty darn hard to get hired there. In the last 10 years I’ve done a lot, and even reached the point where I thought Microsoft wouldn’t be the right place for me. Today I can’t think of anywhere else, or another team I’d rather work on than Messenger Ops at Microsoft.
That deserves another glass of merlot.
A new grocery store is going to open in our town. Well, reopen under new ownership after the last group went all Chapter 11 on us. This has led to some considerable discussion on the various email DL’s and other online forums for folks who live in Snoqualmie.
The best post I’ve seen just came in while I was at lunch, and is in response to my beautiful wife pointing out that a newspaper article said people in Snoqualmie were driving half an hour to get to a grocery store.
But then he got a phone call from a retail developer at Snoqualmie Ridge, who said the community’s only supermarket had closed and residents were driving a half hour to shop for food.
-Puget Sound Business Journal
What a load of bull the retail landlord fed these people! There’s a small organic grocery in downtown Snoqualmie (3-5 minutes) as well as a QFC and Safeway 6 miles away in North Bend. The response?
“Not sure where people would get information line that…”
Thanks Chris!
I’m not sure a spoonful of sugar will help in these rough times in the economy, but it certainly could at least help you feel better for a short moment. Catching up on news from this week I came across TechCrunch launching the f@%kedcompany for the new downturn: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker.
To intro the page the have a great graph that espouses what I’ve been saying for a long time … if your company is having issues or entering tough times cut early, cut ONCE, and cut deep. I’ve lived through not doing that in the last dotcom bubble burst in 2000-2001. The company I worked for went through seemingly endless layoff rounds and morale was totally shot. We were eventually purchased for about half the amount of cash we had on hand … bought with our own money.
Essentially, if you make a deep cut in workforce early in a downturn sure there’s a morale hit, but at the same time the core group of folks who are left know that management is serious about preserving the company – and their jobs. If management decides to cut a few jobs here and there “so as not to make anyone worry” they’re actually doing the opposite – who knows when you could be next.
So in the last couple weeks we’ve heard of lots of layoffs from companies that are well funded (Zillow for one). While a lot of folks are viewing this as a sign of the economy tanking (and I don’t disagree there), I think this is more of a sign of CEO’s making the right decisions for the good of the business and the majority of their employees. Sure it sucks to be the 1 in 4 employees laid off from Zillow, but 3 in 4 now have a good fighting chance of riding through this recession in one piece.
If only my former employers heeded these lessons…
Gotta love the Inter-tubes…
The Dow index has finally broken the psychological 10,000 point barrier this morning. I’ve been waiting for that to happen for a few weeks now. When I started writing this post the Dow Jones Industrial Average was actually off 582 points, down to 9743.32. A late rally looks to have brought back some of the loss to close down 369.88 at 9955.50.
Here’s a look at where the Dow has gone in the last 12 months. We’ve bled out about 28% of the value of the index in a year. That can’t be good! I’m not worried about my retirement – heck we’ve got another 35 years before that’s going to happen. This does SUCK for folks like my parents who are recently retired.
A lot of people wonder how the hell this all happened. I’ve been sticking my head in the sand on that one, other than to know that a lot of banks made a lot of bad loans to a lot of people who should have known better than to buy a $500,000 house when they only make $50,000 a year.
If you really want to know the precipitating events that lead up to the meltdown in the recent months head over to This American Life and listen to their show from this past weekend entitled “Another Frightening Show About the Economy”. Alicea and I heard the first 10-15 minutes and were enthralled at the story being told in a way that a normal person can comprehend. Just because I used to work for an investment firm doesn’t mean I understand it all!
