Yankee’s are consistant. When the games get tough, the RedSox win!

GO SOX!

Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Bronson Arroyo scratches his head while leaving the field after giving up two runs in the first inning against the Toronto Blue Jays Fenway Park in Boston, Wednesday Sept. 28, 2005.

Us RedSox fans Love the pressure! If History repeats itself, the Yankees will choke when they are ahead.

Some examples:

Cellphonepilepsy — The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their cellphones go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Plug-and-Play — A new hire who doesn’t require training. “That new guy is totally plug-and-play.”

Salmon Day — The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in the end. “God, today was a total salmon day!”

A horn starts honking. You make your excuses. “Sorry! Gotta go! My ride is here…” Have you ever needed to get off the phone? Fast? SorryGottaGo is a new website that helps you get off the phone and back to work. Just download any of the dozen or so helpful sounds (a phone rings, a pager beeps, a car alarm goes off, etc) and play it back on your computer as you talk on the phone. Instant excuse, instant exit. Plus, as a bonus SorryGottaGo provides pre-recorded responses to tele-marketers, saving you the embarrassment of face-to-face (or lips-to-ears, however that works) confrontations.

Restricting logon times in a Windows domain is very easy but what do you do if you want to restrict logon times on a standalone Windows XP workstation? Why, use the net user command of course! The actual command takes the form of:

net user account /times: {days/hours}

This could be very useful for parents wanting to limit how much time their kids can use the computer. It only works if the logon being restricted does not have Administrator or Power User rights. This is due to the fact that they can change the logon hours themselves.

Let’s say that you want to restrict an account, let’s use the account name Bob as an example, to only login Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. To accomplish this, you would:

1. Bring up a command prompt
* Start -> Run -> type cmd and hit Enter
2. Type net user Bob /times:M-F, 08:00-17:00 and hit Enter

In the above example, I used 24-hour time. You can use 12-hour time but you must put AM and PM with the times. Using 12-hour time, the example above would have been:

net user Bob /times:M-F, 8:00AM-5:00PM

You can use abbreivations for the days of the week (M,T,W,Th,F,Sa,Su) or spell them out fully. Continuous blocks of days can be in the same block of time by using a hyphen (-) between the first and last day (Monday through Wednesday would be M-W).

Days and times must be seperated with commas (M, 4:00AM-8:00AM) and blocks of days and times must be seperated by semicolons (;) (M, 4:00AM-8:00AM; Th-Sa, 17:00-19:00). The second part would be useful if you want to allow logins at different times on different days. Most of the time, though, logins are allowed at the same time every day.

To set the account back to being able to log in at any time:

net user Bob/times:all

What happens if the user is logged on when their time runs out? They will stay logged on to the system unless you set a Group Policy enforcing logon time.

1. Open the Group Policy Editor
* Go to Start -> Run -> type gpedit.msc and hit Enter
2. Under Computer Configuration:
* Expand (click the plus sign (+) next to) Windows Settings
* Expand Security Settings
* Expand Local Policies
* Click on Security Options
3. In the right pane, double click on Network security: Force logoff when logon hours expire
4. Click the radio button next to Enabled and then click OK
5. Close the Group Policy editor

I think the setting is pretty self-explanatory. Rebooting is not necessary but you will need to logoff.

Why Use a Calendar?

Getting dates entered accurately always manages to be a problem. Everyone seems to have their own way of writing a date. In the USA the standard format is month/day/year whereas most of Europe uses day/month/year. What about date separators… should you use a slash, a dash or a dot, or is it OK to use nothing at all? Or can you type something like 27-Sep-02? In fact, most of these options are acceptable date formats and can be catered for with Windows settings, and even field property settings in Access tables and forms.

Difficulties arise when you create an unbound text box to accept a date on a form that is designed to, for example, pass criteria to a query. Because there is no underlying form field to reject incorrect dates, you need some other way to make sure that the user has entered good data. Sometimes you just don’t know what date to enter… “the 3rd Thursday in April next year”.

What you really need is a calendar, and thankfully Microsoft has provided us with one that can be placed on a form. This tutorial shows you how to find the calendar tool and use it to include pop-up calendars on your Access forms, and explains how to add the simple VBA programming instructions necessary to make the calendar work.

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Here is a handy way for all of you MS Access Database users to search an entire table without limiting yourself to certain fields.

The “Find” feature defaults to the selected field, which means you could end up searching just the active field, instead of the entire table. When using the Find option in Access, you can change the default search options to something that would be more to your own search preferences. Here’s how:

1. Select Tools>> Options from the menu bar.
2. Click on the Edit>> Find tab.
3. Select the option button you want from the Default Find and Replace Behavior panel.
4. Fast Search is the default, and causes Access to search the current field for an exact match to your criteria.
5. General Search searches all fields and matches any part of the field.
6. Start Of Field Search searches the current field for matches between your search string and the beginning characters in the field.
7. When you’ve decided on the proper search criteria, click OK.

Note: You may have to restart Access before the changes take effect.

For those of you that don’t know what a “Browser” is, skip this post! for those of you who do? Good news!

I’ve never been a huge Opera fan, but today they just upped the ante. According to an announcement just posted on their site, Opera is now free! Opera offers all the standard next-wave features you new expect from a browser: integrated RSS, e-Mail, tabbed browsing and adds a few nice extras like integrated IRC chats. If you’ve always wanted to try it out, but were put off by the price, now you should.

Opera FREE!

Before the end of the next decade, NASA astronauts will again explore the surface of the moon. And this time, we’re going to stay, building outposts and paving the way for eventual journeys to Mars and beyond. There are echoes of the iconic images of the past, but it won’t be your grandfather’s moon shot.

This journey begins soon, with development of a new spaceship. Building on the best of Apollo and shuttle technology, NASA’s creating a 21st century exploration system that will be affordable, reliable, versatile, and safe.

The centerpiece of this system is a new spacecraft designed to carry four astronauts to and from the moon, support up to six crewmembers on future missions to Mars, and deliver crew and supplies to the International Space Station.

The new crew vehicle will be shaped like an Apollo capsule, but it will be three times larger, allowing four astronauts to travel to the moon at a time.

The new spacecraft has solar panels to provide power, and both the capsule and the lunar lander use liquid methane in their engines. Why methane? NASA is thinking ahead, planning for a day when future astronauts can convert Martian atmospheric resources into methane fuel.

The new ship can be reused up to 10 times. After the craft parachutes to dry land (with a splashdown as a backup option), NASA can easily recover it, replace the heat shield and launch it again.

Coupled with the new lunar lander, the system sends twice as many astronauts to the surface as Apollo, and they can stay longer, with the initial missions lasting four to seven days. And while Apollo was limited to landings along the moon’s equator, the new ship carries enough propellant to land anywhere on the moon’s surface.

Once a lunar outpost is established, crews could remain on the lunar surface for up to six months. The spacecraft can also operate without a crew in lunar orbit, eliminating the need for one astronaut to stay behind while others explore the surface.

Watch this awesome Movie here!~

Linda and I picked up our new car.

It has been many years since I purchased a new car, but I have had my eyes opened by the automotive industry’s so called “Showroom salesman”. I can’t speak for the entire industry, but I feel I am able to start quoting percentages.

First of all, I can not believe what dealerships allow on the showroom floor. No, I’m not talking about the shiny new cars, but the fact that they allow the unsuspecting consumer to be greeted by such unknowledgeable, untrained and mostly arrogant representatives that are suppose to provide answers to many questions the consumer may have when purchasing such a costly product. It must be hard enough for the automobile industry to design and build a sophisticated piece of machinery, to pour billions of dollars into studies and testing as well as invest in the world’s best methods for manufacturing and distribution. But then to have it all shot to hell when the “Salesman” greets you at the door.

We started out on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I knew that I was the one to steer Linda into the make and model of car we would ultimately decide on, but first I wanted to get her to test drive as many cars as possible to see what she liked and what our budget could bear. Certain “Salesreps” stood out in front of the pack and actually tried their best to appear as “professional” as possible. The gentleman in the local Ford Dealership was fairly new and did a fine job of making us feel comfortable in our test drive of the new Ford “500″. But since the car was a bit out of our price range we didn’t have the opportunity to find out anymore.

The Chrysler “Salesrep” we visited next surprised us with a set of keys to a brand new “Magnum” and told us to take it for a spin with out so much as a copy of our driver’s license! In fact it seemed he asked our first names as an afterthought before allowing us to take a solo ride around the neiborhood! Linda had opportunity to push that car hard. I only wish I had gotten in the driver’s seat! As we pulled back into the lot I remember wondering if the salesman smelled the burning catalytic converter and felt the heat pouring off of the new car! Maybe he did, as he proceeded to go on adnauseum about the technical aspects of the suspension when we returned. Our eyes glazed over, then we left.

Stay tuned as the best is yet to come when I continue with this series.

Hiddenpcmaster