April 2007's Top Posts

I realized that I haven't listed the top posts for April yet, and here it is almost the end of May already. Jeez! Breath easy, your wait is over. Here they are:

1. How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP - An oldie but goodie. Lots of people have experienced this problem. There is hope though, from what I have seen so far, Vista's Offline Files behave much more reliably.
   
2. Strange SharePoint Restore Issue - When I was trying to restore a SharePoint backup, I ran into this weird error, and it turned out to have a silly cause. I'm glad to see that a bunch of people have found this post helpful.
   
3. Microsoft Access error: Compile error . in query expression - Yet another error (are we seeing a pattern here?) when I was writing some VBScript for Access.
   
4. User Submitted War Pigs Video Contest - I haven't actually looked to see what the results were for this contest, but I probably should...
   
5. Working with SharePoint Offline - Review of Revelation and Colligo for SharePoint - An old review I did for a handy application that lets you work with SharePoint offline.
   

   
   

   
   

Microsoft Offers Visual Studio for Free ?!?!

Sorry, but I have a new and improved version of this post over at my new blog. You should check it out.

Messing with the Idiots

I looked this video up on youtube because I saw a clip of it, and it looked pretty funny. Basically the Westboro Church was picketing, and a correspondent from a show decided to mess with them.

The clip below is about four minutes long, and it looks like it came from an Australian show.

If you aren't familiar with the wackos at the Westboro Church, they like to picket, holding signs with such lovely phrases as "God Hates Fags". For some reason, they keep coming to Colorado Springs, but it seems that they travel the country showing the entire nation what ignorant, hateful people they are. I'm sure that Kansas would like to see them leave permanently, and start claiming another state.

I did want to point out that they are protesting at a soldier's funereal, and a couple of the signs that I read were:

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers"
"Billy in Hell" ( with a picture on it. I assume that it is Billy's funereal.)
"Billy is a lying Whore"
"God Hates Cripple Soldiers".

I'm pretty sure that this display of freedom of speech isn't exactly what the founding fathers meant to defend.

Anyway, it is pretty funny to see someone mess with them. Enjoy.

Folder Navigation in Vista - Happiness is a Hyperlinked Address Bar

I almost panicked when I couldn't find the "up" button in Vista. I was never a big fan of using the back button, because when you start following shortcuts, or entering UNC paths in the address bar, it can get a little confusing.

I was pretty disappointed until I realized that all of the items in the address bar can be clicked on. I think that this is a really nice feature, and I'll explain why.

In this picture of XP's Windows Explorer, If I wanted to get back to the root of C:, I could either press "up" 2 times, or I could click in there and delete the "windows\system32" and then press enter.

The picture below is Vista's Windows Explorer, you'll notice that "Local Disk (C:)" is highlighted, and if I click on it, Explorer will jump directly to the C: drive. It gets even better. The arrow to the right of C: is a dropdown menu.

As you can see from the picture below, you can now see all of the folders available to you on the C: drive, and clicking on any of them will jump directly to that folder.

Even better, the menu to the left of "Computer" is also a drop down list which can be used to get to some other frequently used items (see image below).

Even though it's going to take a little getting used to, I think this change will really save me some time.