csquared.org

Bluehost recently switched over from POP3 to IMAP.

After scratching my head over why I couldn't access my email from Horde, I gave tech support a call.

It was rather amusing to give my email's password over the phone -- "capital sierra, papa, alpha, mike, capital mike, echo, capital romeo, sierra, dollar sign, sierra, uniform, charlie, capital Kilo, tilde, alpha, capital sierra, sierra". While "SpamMeRs$sucK~aSs" is not my real email password, you get the idea. Anywho, I think I convinced the tech support guy that I wasn't a "Where's the any key" type user.

Whilst on hold, I figured out what the deal was -- my custom procmail setup was dumping stuff into an mbox format, rather than an IMAP folder. Since everything was now IMAP, Horde was having issues.

So, after about 17 minutes with the tech support guy (thank [insert supreme being of your choice here] for toll-free tech support), they converted my old mboxes to a sexier IMAP format.

After a couple of test emails, I had my procmail sorted as well. Basically, you need to change the target from an mbox to an IMAP folder. QED.

This is just another reason I will recommend Bluehost to anyone who asks. While I've had some minor hiccups in the past, they have been seriously on the ball with their tech support.

My new PC:

Why you can't get a "straight" WinXP bundle, I don't know...

Need to get a dedicated video card, too.

The cover designs I did for [Lord Conrad's Crusade|I designed another book cover...] and [The Empire of Texas|My Third Book Cover] are now available for purchase on [Great Authors Online], [Leo Frankowski's Book Store], [Booksurge.com], and [Amazon.com]. Now, if we can only get more traffic to [Great Authors Online]...

There's many annoyances with WinXP.

For instance, a couple of years ago, I plugged in a wireless network card on my laptop, and my task bar just disappeared never to return.

I used to use GeoShell, mainly due to its ability to map hotkeys. As that functionality has been relegated to AutoHotKey for portability reasons, I decided to look into other shells.

Enter sharpe. Similar functionality to GeoShell, but much more ascetically pleasing. Coupled with adding stuff to the desktop (something you couldn't really do with GeoShell), one word sums it up: Wow.

Check it out.

Patterns of Software by Richard P. Gabriel is available at his site.

As an aside, this is the second book I've seen from New Riders that is "open sourced" with the first being The VIM Book by Steve Oualline. Self: Look up links to this.

If I ever get around to writing a book, I'll have New Riders publish it.

This is another decent VIM quick reference cheat-sheet.

Cryptarithms (a.k.a. Alphametics) are a geeky way to pass the time.

Google used at least one of 'em on their employment examination.

You'll need a jeweler's loupe to read the PDF version, but this is a decent vi reference.

Includes HTML, plaintext, and PDF versions.

I'm about to show off the "post to blog" feature of WordPress to my spousal unit. She probably won't appreciate just how cool this is.