Friends and coworkers know that I can be a bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to the order of items on my windows taskbar.

Think Dennis Hoffman in Rainman when he almost misses Jeopardy….

“Visual Studio goes to the LEFT of Firefox!”

Taskbar Shuffle is clean, free application that takes care of this task in Windows XP and Vista.  Simply drag and drop until your heart is content.  You can also rearrange system tray icons.   Taskbar Shuffle recently released an x64 edition of their application.  Thank you!

Taskbar Shuffle is clean, perrrdy and generally minds its own business while using about 3 MB of memory.  Plus, their domain has “Nerd Cave” in it and that’s just fun to say!

Next up we have Taskix. Taskix is another freebie that packs many of the same features as Taskbar Shuffle.  Taskix natively supported Vista x64 before Taskbar Shuffle, so kudos there.  I like the configurable “wheel-click on taskbar” feature and set it to “Show Desktop”.  There is no SysTray icon while running; a feature that I actually like.  While the UI isn’t as great as Taskbar Shuffle, it leaves a tiny footprint while only using 756K of memory.

Based on the features I need, I’m going to have to crown Taskix victorious.  Gotta love that 756K footprint!  That is until Windows 7 is released when Microsoft FINALLY includes some of these features in the OS.

My wife and I share the iMAC in the office. We both blog…she on Blogger and me on WordPress. We both check the finances with a single login. And we both check email on our respective Gmail accounts. The problem is that I have to log her out and log myself in whenever I sit down to use the computer…and vice versa. There are dozens of solutions; none of which I liked for various reasons. Here’s a few examples:

1. Use different browsers
   1. This allows each browser to have a cookie – one for my account in Safari and one for hers in Firefox
   2. This is lame because we both love Firefox
2. Use an email client app like Mail, Outlook, Thunerbird, etc
   1. I really dig the Google interface…so does my wife
3. Firefox Add-ons…DUH!
   1. This one is really nice
   2. However, I use Firefox’s Master Password, so this would require me to enter my Master Password each time I launch the browser

So that brings us to the solution of the day…drum roll please….

I said…drum roll!

Firefox GreaseMonkey Add-On with a script from UserScripts.org

1. Install the GreaseMonkey add-on here.
2. Relaunch Firefox and look for the monkey face in the bottom, right hand corner of your browser:
   
3. Now, browse here and click on the “Install” link.
4. Login to your Gmail account and notice the new drop down list in place of the “Sign Out” link:
   
5. Follow the instructions in the drop down list and you’re golden!

Many thanks to Jarett for this great script.  Now I need one for Facebook!  Perhaps I’ll try my hand at my first Greasemonkey script and blog about the pain later.

We recently added a Silverlight project to a web application. When we would build the solution locally, it worked great! However, when we would check-in to the Team Foundation Server (TFS 2008), the automated builds were breaking with an error like this one:

"error MSB3021: Unable to copy file "BLA-BLA-BLA\Silverlight.xap" to
"BLA-BLA-BLA\ClientBin\Silverlight.xap".
Could not find a part of the path 'BLA-BLA-BLA\Silverlight.xap'.

We decided to remove the .xap file from source control to avoid the broken builds.  Not a very elegant solution, eh?

While digging around the net today, I found an article that saved the day. Thanks Corvalius! Here is the solution I implemented to resolve the problem:

1. Open Team Explorer as an administrator
2. In Source Control, navigate to your .xap file(s)
3. Right-click the file and click on “Properties”
4. Select the “Security” tab
5. Select the “Build Services” group and set the “Read” permission to “Deny”
6. Do the dance of joy

Step 6 is optional, but highly recommended and hard to resist.

UPDATE:

After upgrading to Team Foundation Server / Visual Studio 2010, I ran into an issue where the build agent said that access to the path of my .XAP file was denied.  To fix it, just follow the steps listed above using the new TFS 2010 collection based build group:

With so many Windows Mobile phones and Crackberries on the market that natively support internet tethering, it has always been a mystery to me why Apple & AT&T would lock this feature down.  I’ve heard theories of AT&T being unable to support the flood of traffic and others of marketing conspiracy.

At any rate, this has topped my nag list about the iPhone since I first got one last summer.  I was excited to read that OS 3.0 would support tethering.  Like other nerds, I counted the days until the release of OS 3.0 when such features as internet tethering, cut/copy/paste (about time Apple) and MMS (REALLY about time Apple & AT&T) would be available.  As the date approached, I heard dirty rumors that while the phone would support the technology, AT&T would not allow tethering and MMS wouldn’t be available until late summer.  I cried a little that day.

Then I came across this little article. THANK YOU AARON KRILL!

Aaron details how to enable internet tethering on iPhone OS 3.0 using AT&T’s network.  I tested it.  It works.  Es bueno. Here is a clip from his blog:

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING STEPS MAY VOID YOUR IPHONE WARRANTY OR VIOLATE YOUR AT&T TERMS OF SERVICE! BY EXECUTING THIS WALKTHROUGH YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU AND ONLY YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ILL SIDE EFFECTS!

1. Download the file to some location on your computer
2. Plug in your iPhone
3. Start iTunes
4. Click on your iPhone in the device listing in iTunes
5. Alt-Click the “Update” button (Shift-click in Windows)
6. Browse to where you saved the IPCC you downloaded
7. Select this file and click Choose
8. Wait…
9. Rejoice

I have a home brew home theater PC running Windows Vista Ultimate x64.  It’s connected to my 40″ Samsung in the living room and pretty much runs Windows Media Center all the time.

Every now and then, I have the need to remote into this box from another computer in the house or from a computer remotely when traveling.  I like to do so without disrupting those who may be watching TV at the time.  I had been using a fix that I found here.  However, when I installed service pack 2, my little multiple remote desktop session patch stopped working.  I dug around and found this site, which claimed to have the fix but didn’t work.  After reading a bit, I replaced the termsrv.dll from AndrewBlock.net and replaced it with the termsrv.dll from RapidShare.  I ran the script and VOILA!

This is working for me on Vista x64 with SP2.  Hope this comes in handy for another.

Download Vista SP1 Patch Here

Download Vista SP2 Patch Here