Posts from — February 2008

I got this tip from my co-worker  who is the company guinea pig for our Vista deployment.  Ever feel like you don’t have as much real estate with Vista?  It’s partly because the window borders (a/k/a chrome) are obnoxiously think by default when you’re running the Aero interface. Try this tip.  Open the Personalization Screen by right-clicking the desktop and choosing “Personalize”:

Click on Window Colors and Appearance: 

On this window, you can tweak colors and transparency (he says he hates the transparency and turns it off, I don’t mind it), but we’re going deeper.  Click on the “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link:

We’re still heading deeper, click “Advanced…”

We’ve arrived!  Under the item drop down, select “Border Padding” and set the size down from 4 to 1.  I also shrank my title bar and menus down from 19 to 17.  Keep in mind, you’re not changing the font size, so don’t think you’re going to be squinting. Were just putting some of the chrome on a diet.

Ok yourself out of the dialog box hell and you’re done.  Windows feel a bit more trim under this setting and I definitely feel like I’ve got more usable screen real estate.  Give it a shot and tell me what you think

Best viewed large.

With all the snow we’ve had, there is nowhere to put it.  All of the parking lots have huge mountains in them which take up almost a 1/4 of the parking spaces.  Some company was using the vacant lot next to our building as a place to put all of it.  They hauled a bunch in in dump trucks and used a front end loader to pile it up.

The Wisconsin Presidential Primary was today and I did my civic duty.

Looks like if you’re a student, you’re in luck, Microsoft is giving away full versions of Visual Studio, Expression Studio and Windows Server.  Interesting move, since as I’ve gotten re-involved with my alma mater, the prevalence of the xAMP stack in college circles is outstanding. 

I guess time will tell if this does Microsoft any good. Make no mistake, this is about trying to stem the tide of Computer Science/Engineering students leaving school with their head full of Java and PHP. That seemed to be a focus while I was there, and I’m sure it still is.

For the first time in a really long time I noticed it was still light out when I left work.  Granted, the sun was setting, but it was light out nonetheless. (Yes, I know I’m behind on cross-posting these to the blog)

We work up to rain this morning. This was it streaming down our front window, which also meant it was probably streaming into our basement.  A quick check confirmed it.  Not too much, but enough to be annoying.

One benefit: cleaning up that room made me finally get off my butt and list a ton of stuff on eBay I’ve been meaning to sell for a while.

Got a kick out of these chairs and our friends daughter sitting attentively on them.

The space heater in my office at work that fried an entire circuits worth of outlets.  The electrician said it was many due to poor installation and not the heater.

All of my Valentines.

My youngest heard a train horn (we live sort of close to some tracks - they’re about 1/4 mile away) and proclaimed “choo choo” and then started tugging on the box with all the trains in it.  So we got them out and he played with them up until bedtime.

This is my favorite train in the set, the green one’s name is Derek.  Here he is having a conversation with Sir Topham Hatt, the dude that runs the show.

Yes, I’ve lost it - I’m photographing toys.  Worse, I hated the lighting in the living room, so I broke out my lighting kit.  This was lit with a shoot through umbrella with a SB24 @ 1/4 power.