Category: abject failure

Stupid Stupid Stupid

Left the garage door open for the umpteenth time last night (ironically for exactly the same reason — the stairs are being repaired and I am going in the house a different way). Thankfully nothing was stolen.

Investing now in my third automatic garage door closer — the previous ones stopped working after a while and actually started automatically opening the garage door in the middle of the night. This one uses a tilt-sensing mechanism to determine if the door is open or not, so I have higher hopes for it working more effectively.

Plus the car/garage animation is awesome.

Funky Email Problem

Had this odd email problem and want to post about it here for posterity and hopefully to help other people if they experience it themselves.

Here’s the gist:

A few weeks ago I ran into a problem where, when I replied to two or more messages within a few seconds of each other to two or more different recipients, something strange would happen. Namely, one or more of those recipients would get the email intended for the other recipients, complete with the entire message history. Everything looks fine in the email — it’s just gone to the WRONG person.

I’ve searched online for solutions and have taken steps to fix ranging from reinstalling Microsoft Office (this is Outlook 2003) to reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling Windows XP and all my apps from scratch. But the problem started up again today.

My next hunch is that the problem is caused by Symantec Norton Internet Security’s email scanning, which obviously intercepts and processes mail during the sending process. I have that feature turned off in the hopes that it will remedy the issue.

Anyone experience anything similar? Drop a line or a comment!

Update 1: Nope, turning off Norton email scanning didn’t do it. Now wondering if I should dump Norton altogether… also considering simply buying a new computer; this one has plenty of additional problems far beyond this annoying issue…

Update 2: The problem continues, so it’s either Outlook, this PC, or Yahoo! Mail. I’m actually getting a new PC in 2 weeks and am going to upgrade to the latest Outlook on it. Meanwhile have changed Outlook to “send/receive immediately when connected” so there’s no chance for emails to linger together in the outbox. Still, so aggravating (and embarassing).

Update 3: Yahoo! thinks the problem is likely Outlook, in which case the new PC/Outlook 2007 fix ought to make it all better. Haven’t seen the problem recur since turning on immediate email sending, as expected, so that temporary fix is hopefully working for the short term.

Then They Came For Our Magazines…

A Miserable Three Months for the Magazine Business: Sales Down 20 Percent (At Least) | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD

This is just a test, but it’s a good story, too.

James ‘Kibo’ Parry sends these fine photos of a Malaysian bootleg DVD cover in…

Why he bought Superbabies on DVD I’ll never know, but…

here we go:

Note the line at the top…

Whether it’s a language issue or refreshing ironic honesty on the part of the bootleggers, I’ll never know… but in any case, we at filmcritic.com are flattered (especially Pete, who was the only critic brave enough to sit through the film).

Here’s Pete’s original review.

Thanks, Kibo!

I’m posting this here as a public service for the future of humanity and the Net. Fixing a stuck Alpine in-dash three-disc CD player/changer: Take a thin but stiff piece of plastic (a very thin ruler will work, or you can try a piece of thin cardboard) and slide it in between the bottom of the disc cartridge and the slot into which it goes. Insert the plastic toward the right of the unit — when it hits the back wall, slide it to the left. You will hit a latch underneath the cartridge and the stuck cartridge will manually eject. Take out any discs in the cartridge, re-insert it, and try shifting between discs. Eject again, and repeat the latch trick as needed. Eventually everything will work right.