August 2003 Archives

Emergency Mahjong

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30th of August is when I must play mahjong. Clarissa and Delwyn will be there. Emen, what the fuck do you have on that you're so god-damn busy. Anything less than getting laid is not good enough. It's not like I didn't ask early enough.

So would Su-lin like to play mahjong? (I promise we'll actually play as much bridge as Su-lin's little heart desires, which I'd be rather intent on myself anyway)

Anyone? Peishan too busy? God damn it what's more important than me coming back and mahjong? (please restrain yourselves from answering that)

I know my sister-in-law reads this, though I suppose marital bliss is excuse enough?

I'll promise to be no end of charming (read: sullen and tired) and I'll bring lovely duty free wine...

Screw you guys... home.

Inquirer dispels myths

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This was up some time ago, but I thought it best that I put it up sometime, since the "myths" it talks about are rightly quite silly ones.

Probably up there with "Outsourcing is the work of the devil", "all spam is foreign", "everyone should install and pay for antivirus and firewalls", "product activation/copy controls benefit users/deters piracy".

David Coursey

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There are things I think I probably should be doing now, but at least I feel that instead of doing those I can come here and mouth off.

I would like to write to David Coursey about a number of things but I just doubt he would read it, and I'd probably just end up sounding like an idiot. But then again I have real problems with some of his opinions which are exclusionary in the extreme - which is all the more frustrating for his disapproval of Republicans.

Makes me suspect that he's a particular brand of soft-core liberal whose concern for others is grounded in an affective kind of sentimentality.

And him writing a switcher's guide, yeah fine whatever, but him writing a book on troubleshooting windows? I could probably do a better job than he would. Norton Utilities my ass.

But then again I wouldn't want to be reading Dvorak on PCMag. In that case, it was so annoying I can't even remember what it was that he was an ass about.

Ha ha

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I'm just thinking of the time when I exclaimed about Jiang (Q) who told me he was going to watch Chicago in Sinapore, to which I did qudruple takes and kept exclaiming how wonderful that was. It was only later that I realised he was referring to Chicago the musical which had been on forever whilst I was thinking of Chicago the band.

On another note, I have a punchline without a joke, which goes "...which really puts the whore in Sephora".

Naughty Su-lin

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Su-lin is just so agreeably funny at times. I mean, personally, this is the kind of writing that I think Su-lin excels at, basically being Su-lin on the page - pithy, sharp, very very sly; very like a china-shop wanting to be a bull.

Now if only Su-lin would master the art of short paragraphs, which makes online reading so much more pleasureable... :P - and honestly, which I think would really play to her strength of very syncopated prose - punchy with a sense of rhythm and pace.

MP3-CD's

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Following my little anti-MP3 diatribe, I'd just like to give a heads up to people that I'll be giving away my MP3-CD collection because I can't stand them anymore and will be bringing my CD collection with me like a lamb, or like Mary, whichever way you see it.

At the moment, the way I see it, Winston and Peishan should get first dibs, then Clarissa/Delwyn - I don't suppose Su-lin particularly wants anything. If Dion were interested he'd have to work through Delwyn in some way. The services of a burning machine *might* be on hand, as well as a ridiculous amount of CD-R's to people who are at Mahjong parties, or who come over to my place after I build the new comps.

CD's

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The Michelle Branch CD is a mixture of getting things okay and being annoying. As with most autorun flash stuff, it takes over your PC without asking when you insert the disc (autoplay is actually useful which is why I don't turn it off by default). It also has all it's content as macromedia embedded .swf files which, unlike the previous penchant for .mov files, I can't view in full-screen.

So I bought at 19 inch monitor running at 1280x1024 for fuck? (yes I do realise resolution doesn't actually matter in full screen mode, but I assume it does somewhat in midget size)

On the up side, the trend in these things has been to make them much easier to exit than before, which means that the content is actually easy to access, meaning you're actually going to bother to view it more than once, since it's not as annoying as it once was.

Still no initial menu for playing the CD instead of going straight to the extras. Viewing the extras is not the only reason you put a CD into your PC. Fuckwits.

The Neil Young album I bought was slightly more elegant, putting the extras on a DVD - and in this case, it seems (I haven't seen the extras yet) that the content is actually an integral part of the musical experience. Oh the wonders of economic circumstances creating new forms of art :D.

Of course I'm in many minds about the rather pathetic fillip that most offer in terms of special extras to get people to pony up for the CD rather than downloading. But then I've just recently been evangelising my annoyance at the inadequacy of compressed audio formats - CD quality is really just so much sharper and fuller.

The album's wonderful, Young just sounds so much more crunchy with Crazy Horse. And I'm quite impressed with the HDCD format in which the CD's released, though I suppose I shouldn't have been pissing myself/been surprised by the discovery that the format is now owned/propogated by the Vole :).

Sleeper

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Well yes, it does seem that Louis just tends to be tetchy when he's blogging, but it's probably just the nature of the exercise and the will in not wanting to be entertaining on demand.

There's to be a lunch buffet thing on the afternoon of my brother's wedding dinner, which might be a good excuse to get people together to play cards, feed them and avoid my relatives. Honestly the first people who come up to me and tell me I should lose weight are gonna get a hand to talk to. I would have said I'd tell them to go fuck themselves, but there are things relatives just don't understand.

I'm just thinking of the rather curt way in which I rebuffed Ve-Yin's attempt some time back to draw out my romantic aspirations by talking about computers. If you don't get it, whose fault is that?

Donkey and Mule

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In a move I should have done much earlier, I've paused most of the downloads on the Donkey, and my CPU usage has gone down dramatically. I suppose having 500 simultaneous queued downloads isn't the most efficient way of going about things?

Individual downloads now have a higher download speed, which is good. I really wonder how I managed to fill up the entirety (almost) of a 120 gig hard drive with temp files... :P. Hope it doesn't overflow when I go off and leave it running.

I was testing out the Mule, but really can't see the evangelism that accompanies it. It's still not the quick fix that Kazaa is, and by the nature of the protocol I suppose, there's not a noticeable speed differential with Donkey.

Oh, and getting rid of older corruption prone temp files seems to help. None of the more recent files are getting the frequent corruptions that have plagued some of the older files.

Would people be interested in finding out about places that host the gazillions of ed2k links out there? If you want it, you're going to have to ask. Forum link's on the right.

(Please note: close personal friends are somewhat exempt from all this, but only just.)

Oh, and just to say to people in general, if you have "friends" who live overseas, esp in the states who you want to bring stuff back for you? - don't be an idiot. Shopping for things, even online, isn't the most fun of things, esp when you have to be considerate about things you don't want to be.

The excuse that "things are cheaper there" is not a good one. If you can get it where you are, I'll charge you courier fees for bringing it back. "Shipping is so expensive" - not as expensive as my time for stuff I don't really want to do. If you want a keychain I can buy from somewhere I go to everyday (ie nowhere) then fine - things that require me to think while packing my suitcase create enormous amounts of animosity (think MP3-CD players).

Oh, and if I wasn't unemployed, I wouldn't be home all day to wait for UPS deliveries - which means I might have to end up going to the delivery depots to pick up stuff. I'm bringing back heatsinks from here because I really don't want to have to deal with shitty brand ones in Singapore which I know nothing about. And cases are just too big.

The US is insular and myopic - shipping overseas is not something it does easily; for goodness sake, they don't even bother to make alot of their stuff autosensing, so the fact that the rest of the world uses different voltages (but do offer autosensing stuff) doesn't seem to bother them. NTSC is not the only video format available to the world. Deal with it. Rock and Roll.

Oh, and 2 words: Region Encoding. Thank god for Lite-On and the pirate realm that is Asia (and the smurfing interweb).

And on a personal note, I really don't go very many places when I'm here, I spend most of my time at home. Going out is an event, and an event that I want to keep genial and happy, not frustrated and tetchy.

(and oh) For the sake of momentum I've allowed my fears to grow larger than life.

Dissolute

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What had promised to be a sweltering day has actually turned out rather temperate, no doubt partly because it's not so humid, and because I've not left the house :D.

Feelings of dissoluteness and lack of employment (in one sense only, not the other) are starting to creep in, though reading the Sword of Honour Trilogy (I've actually finished the second book) is quite a lark.

If Su-lin's reading this, could she recommend a Dorothy Sayers book to me? Basically a good one to start off with, something rollicking and fun perhaps.

Hate the sinner, but love the sin.

Day 1

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So you've decided to try using Opera. Clever you.

There are nice easy instructions to be found on how to download and install Opera here.

The default settings are more than adequate for your installation so just go ahead and follow the above instructions.

Once Opera starts up, just carry on having a look around you, most things are self explanatory and encountering things for the first time, you should read the dialogs and understand what they're telling you.

Don't worry though, everything can be put back if you change it, nothing you can do is irrevocable. When you know more about what you're doing, you'll be better able to decide how/whether you want these things to help you.

The best advice I can give is to just start browsing around - if you're adventurous, you can use the provided bookmarks to find out new things; and there are convenient bookmarks to a bunch of sites including many to Opera resources for you to explore at your own leisure. Otherwise just visit your favorite sites and see how perfectly Opera handles them.

Essential Tips:

If you don't like the bookmarks being on your left like that, you can turn that off by pressing F4. Pressing F4 again will bring it back.

Pressing F12 gives you options that you might want to change more often. Just to start off, you might want to use the option that says "Open requested pop-up windows only", which will block unwanted pop-ups (one of the best reasons for using Opera). Most pop-ups you'll want will still come up - but if you're having problems, going back to "Accept pop-up windows" might help (highly unlikely)

That's already alot for most people on the first day, so just keep browsing around and appreciate how nicely Opera does things. If you're ready to move on, you can carry on to Day 2.

Mom-Proof Opera Guide

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I've decided that I must start on my Switcher's guide to Opera/Gentle Day to day tips for Opera Migration. I'm aware of but have not read a similar guide called 30 Days to becoming an Opera-Lover, and I suppose this is quite similar, thought that was specific to Opera 6.

This is meant to be a very gradual guide that gives suggestions and helpful info that anyone can follow - I'm writing this with my Mom in mind - if she can do it, all of you people should be able to.

This was meant to be the Day 0 post, just to get some things out of the way, a kind of preamble if you will. Most of this will probably end up with proper formating on my Opera Fanboy Site.

Padlocks

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This is rather moving.

Economist on Blogs

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Huh, it appears the Economist has decided to do a fluff piece on blogs and say nothing particularly insightful (and get things very much wrong - eg: Blogger was selling Blogger Pro long before Google). I suppose the whole thing about the corporatising of blogs is something interesting, but then we know this already.

Like most mainstream newspapers the Economist tends to fall into the trap (less often than most though obviously) of writing about things that simply exhibit how little they really know about what's really going on.

Just because it's news to the doddering old and the intellectually stunted, doesn't excuse you talking nonsense about something you obviously have very little investment in, and something that you're obviously not too clear about. Worse when they decide that they should put aside anything they've ever been taught about tone and come off as completely uninformed and cack-handed.

What's especially disappointing is that for a newspaper that so often makes it its mission to push boundaries in how people think about things - to persuade and illuminate - as well as to provide startling and insightful observations about the unusual sides of overworn arguments, it can so often resort to this kind of sensationalised wolf-crying.

Regurgitating the opinions that could be found by any idiot in the know, much less by Slashdot responses reduces your newspaper from the bearer and illuminator of knowledge, to the rather pathetically journalistic function of nutella - all you do is spread.

If people have been having problems contacting me it's because Fastmail is down for the moment due to the power outage. If you need to contact me urgently (esp because you think I'm deluded for thinking so) you can find an alternate e-mail address on a different server here. Of course IM is another cunning plan.

I'd just like to indulge in conspiracy theory and rumour mongering for a moment to point to speculation on the Inquirer's part (because they're so reliable) that MSBlaster took down the power grid :D.

On a very side note, kudos to TypePad for fixing the alignment issues with their blogging interface with Opera before they go gold - though obviously they should have done it much earlier. Now they just need to do what any good forum software is able to do with aplomb, be able to have hyperlink assistants that work cross platforms (ie in Opera).

This is to all my rather technologically challenged friends (ie: all of you except Michel, who a) would know about this already and know better b) is running linux and hence unaffected). The rest of us mere mortals who run Windows should take note (this only affects NT based systems, meaning Windows 2000 and XP, NOT 98 and ME as far as I know). Just to say, in all probability, everyone who's running XP WILL be affected. You'll probably notice that you involuntarily reboot about a minute after each time you go online. The way to overcome the rebooting is posted in the fix below.

There's a worm on the loose, which is much like a virus only you don't have to execute anything on your computer, like an e-mail attachment, for your system to get infected. You can tell it's on your computer if you right click on your task bar and click on "task manager". If you're infected you'll see a service in the "processes" tab that says "msblast.exe"

To remove this from your system you should follow these instructions. If you want to find out more about what's going on you can read this.

And for god's sake, visit www.windowsupdate.com once in a while to update your system before this crap happens again. People who are on broadband using Windows XP (and actually some earlier OS's as well if you get the right updates) can set your systems to download updates automatically. With dial-up you're better off making periodic trips (though using auto-update as notification might be a good idea).

I'm only doing this because 2 people have come to me so far with miscellaneous problems that have ended up being caused by this. Please get this fixed before I have to thump you on the head for asking me what's wrong with your computer.

Writing

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You'd think blogging out of boredom is a sign of something, or that it's not the most productive - and yet, as I'm coming to realise, I'm not really to keen anymore to report what's happening around me. And probably my most idle posts are the ones that contain the most reflection, the most considered commentary, which is probably the better part of this blog.

I feel a frustration, and above all a kind of trepidation at writing - I find myself avoiding it, despite thinking to myself that that's what I'd like to do. But then the shuttlecocks here is nothing new, it's not that different (though it is different) from writing academic work.

Throwing Muses

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What can I say about the Throwing Muses but I never quite understood how demeaned the term religious experience had become until I experienced this kind of trembling.

CD "Copy Protection"

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I found this on Michel's site, thought I might as well share about it, since I've not as yet gone off on one about this particular topic - and thankfully the site does it for me.

Say NO to corrupt audio discs

As bad and as futile/alienating as product activation - stupidity worthy of complaint - return such tripe to the stores as a sign of your protest.

Apparently the Michelle Branch album isn't protected in the US, as it is in the UK. So I might actually get it.

I would put a button on my main page, but unfortunately the buttons are a bit ugly - I'll probably put one in the Links page though.

ICQ Lite

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I can't believe I'm saying this, but ICQ lite now doesn't seem half bad - no doubt because I removed those god-damn ads - which I'd never click thru just on principle, not because they were ads per-se, just because they were annoying. I'm again more than appreciative of Google's subtlety of ad placement (how's that for ass-kissing?).

And at least AOL has gotten enough of it's act together so I don't have to run both AIM and ICQ. Isn't interoperability just shiny? Can't wait till MSN can joing the fun. But then again I can't wait for pigs to fly out of my ass - some things are just shy on probability.

This does NOT mean I in any way like or endorse the use of ICQ, which remains a plague on human existence. MSN remains my IM of choice. If only MSN messenger would find out how to work with OE like Windows Messenger does - but then that would get around the buddy list ads... I see it all now. Not that I have buddy list ads...

Again, things that flash? can go and suck eggs. Static content is a wonderful thing.

CQ

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It's amazing the amount of good celluloid I've been seeing recently (Wrong Turn exempt of course). I just got the DVD of CQ, by Roman Coppola, and it's pretty good. It's making me want to buy Danger: Diabolik.

Remove ICQ ads and another keyboard

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I've found a lovely site that assists in removing ads from ICQ and ICQ Lite, which many of you might be interested in. Very effective I must say, and looks like a rather organised little setup, so they should be around for a bit before AOL Time Warner shut them down... It's called allicq.com. This is the link to the cracks page.

I've also got my lovely old school Natural Keyboard, and I'm pretty sure it was the Intellitype software that was making the Alt and Ctrl keys sticky.

Opera Fanboy

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Due to the overwhelming, and fantastically funny, responses on the MyOpera forums, I've put up what I could whip up in an hour as a placeholder for my Opera Fanboy site. The "You Know You're An Opera Fanboy" link at the moment just links to the forum thread, but this should expand as I go along. You can find Opera Fanboy at opera.fallingbeam.org and operafanboy.cjb.net.

Notes to Myself

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In case I forget, pet peeves should include something about antivirus products/firewalls and why I really dislike them, along with spyware detectors. Also diatribes against support personnel and shitty support. And how the devil should take both Flash animation, animated gifs, and embedded audio. Oh and blocking of pop-ups - which Opera does so admirably. Maybe a day by day newbie's guide to Opera or something, or outstanding complaints about the browser.

Product Activation and corrupt CD's (copy protection).

Intellectual Midget on Film Theory

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Because I like being dismissive without extended explaination of my pique, I'll just post three links to articles in the L.A Times, the first of which talks much nonsense about critical theory in general, narrative theory by association, and film theory in particular. Obviously no one who knows me will have to guess who's the top of my intellectual midget list now.

(Please note: because the L.A. Times wants you to register with their site to read this crap, I've sacrificed a disposable e-mail account to give you a username and password, so you don't have to. User: latimesprintscrap pw: absolutecrap)

Lights, Camera, Action. Marxism, Semiotics, Narratology.

Some idiot who doesn't seem to quite get how much of a marxist stereotype he's making of himself.

Take it from a cinema studies grad: Film theory's not for everyone, but there are riches within the jargon

A response to the above idiot, which I've not read, but which probably isn't great.

Film Theory: Elitist Nonsense or a Critical Life Lesson?

Letters of reply, the first by Branigan, a sampling of whose work I've actually read, and who is shown to be a rather witty intelligent man, not least by his response.

Room 101

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Since I've been so "grumpy", I've decided to put up a "What would Louis put into Room 101" page in the not too distant future. Highlights will include:

DVD intros/menus

AMD stock heatsinks

Jeff Goldblum

Opera Fanboy

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I've posted what are the beginnings of my Opera Fanboy site here. Suggestions are more than welcome.

I've also posted about this on the MyOpera forums.

Yeah, I'm feeling a growing boredom at writing about events and occurances. Who really gives a flying fuck?

That said, I've had a spike of activity on my forum from random people coming to my site to download the RJC teacher clip. Some of them are obviously people that I know, and who are the ones I posted it for. The rest are probably fuckwits who don't quite understand the wonders of P2P file sharing. Not that the 2 groups are mutually exclusive... (what? I can't call people I know fuckwits? have you *met* some of the people I know?) (now that was rather bitchy wasn't it?) (I obviously think myself inordinately funny)

But yes, I'm probably not too interested in maintaining people who just come here to download crap off me - though the idea that people would come here for the sparkling wit and second rate computer commentary blows my mind. I have a feeling that the entry to follow might be the one where I defend my use of Movable Type to my potential (but increasingly unlikely) employers at Google, who now own Blogger.com. Not to mention the fact that I've been promoting TypePad.

And please, honestly, the new blogger interface for "alternative" browsers? Absolutely fucking lame. While I admit that it's at least a try, and that there are things that Opera just can't do, the fact that they have to put it as a seperate page with no other settings is just not good enough. And the archiving bugs are hell hell hell. (If google hires me, I'm so going to slink off and delete this...)

Which brings me to say that I really really do want to get hired by Google, even though there are so many reasons why it just won't happen. The fact that I don't like one of their products doesn't (to me) mean very much. As it is, the way I see it, Movable Type and Blogger service very different markets. Not to be rude, but people go to Blogger cuz it's free, despite the fact that it's not great for anything but ease of starting-up.

People willing to pay money, and who aren't intellectual midgets, aren't going to pay what blogger pro charges, along with the cost of blogspot hosting (which is exhorbitant) when they can get cheap, reliable hosting from $5 a month (and all the other wonders that that brings) and figure out how to install Movable Type. At least the basic Typepad service is cheapish.

The fact that neither of them has a fantastic interface that Opera can use means that I'm sticking to a free solution and using hosting I would have gotten anyway.

Which brings me to the point where I insist that people who are canny enough to use browsers like Opera, Mozilla and Safari are the people that should be treated the best. These are the people, who, like me, are more than happy to buy everything they can online, who are willing to pay for genuinely useful services, and spend more time online than any other activity during the day. I can't even stand the way that IE loads pages nowadays, all heavy, with a feeling of weight. Presto is a nice rendering engine. Mozilla is okay, and getting better, but it's really not that fantastic.

TypePad

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Well, so Louis has been a bit tetchy recently, but can you blame me?

Anyway I've got an offer for you guys, if you want to move to a blogging tool that's worth a damn, you might want to try TypePad, which I've been beta testing for a bit, and which is going public soon. It's from the same people who do Movable Type, which powers this blog, so I thought some publicity was in order.

I, being a beta tester, can recommend friends to get a lifetime discount of 20% off on signing up (I get nothing from doing this, just so you know) and the accounts start at about $5 a month (before discount), which is pretty reasonable - esp after the discount and when you're not quite proficient enough to buy your own hosting/domain and install Movable Type (which, trust me, is just that much better). Caveats are of course that you'll probably want to be an IE user, Opera isn't the best idea (which I should pillory them for, but I'm just too tired).

So if you're interested, post in my forum or e-mail me, the link is on my main page.

Small sample of what your blog might look like can be found here.

Outlook

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This is how you permanently remove the ICQ bar from Outlook. Bastards.

And yes, it was the cluster size that was fucking up Outlook, but I suspect I'll be sticking with Outlook Express for the immediate future.

If you find me talking about computers boring you can fuck the hell off.

RJC GP Teacher Movie Clip Dowload

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This is so god-damn funny (amongst other things) I can't be bothered to comment too much on it, but just to say, download it (after you've registered on my forums of course) and laugh your ass off.

On a more serious note, let me say this: Rodney King.

Clean Install

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Putting your OS on a RAID setup is underated I must say. Remarkably zippy.

ATI is very naughty - just for the record, the way to get my graphics driver to work after a clean install is to go to device manager and uninstall it from safe mode. And yes I so need a setup CD.

And the way to fix the scrolling issue is to just reinstall the graphics drivers.

Thankfully Opera's not the one at fault. It's a pity 7.2 beta 2 is so unstable. And they didn't fix the startup bug in Klipfolio - I'm off to complain about it right now.

Oh, and what the hell is up with Outlook slowing down after my nice new install? Viewing mails now takes ages, the loading is so slow. Have decided to move back to Outlook Express until Office 2003 comes out.





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This page is an archive of entries from August 2003 listed from newest to oldest.

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