After enabling Skype within Trillian, my Skype Voice Mail stopped working. Disabling Skype in Trillian and Voice Mail works again. It looks like Trillian has had this issue since February 2012 (version 5.1 build 18 per this post). I’m running version 5.3 build 16 (June 2013) and the issue still exists. Both Skype and Trillian are great—I hope this issue gets resolved.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
—
John Gall
When reviewing stocks to buy ask this simple question…
What company would I want to own and why?
Road Warrior Fitness–> Touchfit: GSP
When traveling on business and living out of a hotel room, Touchfit: GSP is an excellent iPhone application for a fantastic 20, 40 or 60 minute body weight workout.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The two most important days in your life are
the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
—Mark Twain: American author and humorist
Access 2013—New is not better…
While I have not used Microsoft Access for a long time (no serious work since Access 2.0 circa 1995), I can’t believe how the product has evolved. The Access 2013 interface is virtually unusable for simple data cleansing/mining tasks. I mistakenly thought Access would be right tool to take some Excel data, add some primary keys, remove duplicates, and make the data more relational (especially since I’m not an Excel guru). Unfortunately it’s now easier to use Microsoft SQL Enterprise Manager than Access 2013. It feels like in the desire to make Access ‘user friendly’ has morphed it into ‘user frustration.’
“Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
Resetting the database owner (dbo) after restoring a backup in Microsoft SQL Server.
If you receive this advice from Microsoft SQL Server: “You should correct this situation by resetting the owner of database ‘mydatabase’ using the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement.”
I found the easiest solution is to actually drop the existing user account in the database and then change the owner to the server’s login account using the following commands:
use mydatabase
exec sp_dropuser "user_acct" — security user in the database
exec sp_changedbowner "user_acct" — security login in the server
Freeware that I use
My main PC, which was running Windows 8, failed. Rather than repair the Windows 8 OS, I reverted back to Windows 7—and the desktop experience is much better.
Just in case another fresh install is ever needed, below are the free software applications I install and recommend:
- VLC media player – VideoLAN is the best freeware video player I’ve ever used.
- Handbrake – A great open source video transcoder.
- 7-Zip – An open source Zip/7z/Tar/GZip/LZH/more manager.
- Virtual Clone Drive – Best way to mount ISO images as a drive letter.
- Cure PDF Writer – A printer driver allow anything to “print” to a .pdf file
- Adobe Acrobat Reader – The original (yet now bloated) tool to view .pdf files
- Defraggler – An improved way to defragment your hard drive.
- Kindle for PC – Read Amazon books on the computer.
- KeePass – Store the .kdb file in dropbox and have an awesome secure password manager.
- Dropbox – Well known, simple, file sharing software for all devices.
- CamStudio – Open source desktop screen recording software ala Camtasia.
- Skype – Originally in Delphi, the leader in peer-to-peer voice calling.
- FileZilla – An FTP Client and Server released under GNU General Public License.
- iTunes – Clumsy Windows application with the largest selection of music and podcasts.
- Zune – A better player than iTunes, but music selection is limited.
- Chrome – Google built a better browser using KISS.
- Firefox – A good backup browser for web debugging but lacks duplicate tab (as of v21.0).
- Firebug – Excellent plug-in for debugging and profiling HTML/JavaScript.
- Opera – The alternative web browser that Presto-chango is moving to WebKit.
- Fiddler – A must have web http debugging proxy—it’s essential for AJAX development.
- WireShark – When needing to go deeper into the bits on the network below HTTP, WireShark is THE answer.
- XAMPP for Windows – A Windows-friendly way to install an open source web development stack (include Apache, MySQL, PHP, and more).
- FireBird SQL Server – A stable robust full-featured SQL Server that’s always been superior to MySQL.
- MySQL – The world’s most populate open source database (while not the best open source database).
- MongoDB – A C++ open-source document database that’s a breeze to use. My favorite “NoSQL” option.
- HeidiSQL – A Delphi open-source application to work with MySQL and MSSQL databases quickly and easily.
- Notepad++ – An excellent notepad replacement with multiple programming languages keyword highlighting.
- Paint.Net – Proof that a good .Net program can be written, an outstanding image editing application.
- Pencil – Amazing open source wireframe/storyboarding tool.
- Tortoise SVN – The best way to work with Subversion on Windows.
- Tortoise GIT – Almost makes GIT friendly.
- Tortoise HG – Makes Mercurial friendly.
- Free Pascal – The cross platform open source complier alternative to C/C++.
- Lazarus – An amazing Delphi-like IDE for OSX/Windows/Linux.
- Swiff Player – A stand-alone Flash (SWF) moving player.
- WinDowse – An advance windows window analyzer.
- Windows Live Essentials – Solely for Live Writer–which I’m using right now for this post.
- Flash Player – How the web does video (and plays games).
- Silverlight – How Netflix does/did video—a deprecated technology abandoned by Microsoft in favor of HTML5 and JavaScript for Windows 8 (an OS which I just abandoned).