Some things are as easy as they should be. Recently the screen on my Treo 600 got injured . Okay, broken. While I have the insurance offered by SprintPCS, I thought for some reason that it didn't cover the screen… when I turned it on and saw the screen was broken, I was really really sad. So you...

While cruising the new FAQ at TreoCentral, I noticed a seemingly bizarre answer to the question “ My Treo 600's vibrate feature stopped working! Is there anything I can do? “ Apparently (and I haven't verified this, as my vibrate feature is working just fine, thank you very much) you have...

Recently, I helped out a local charitable organization by printing some labels from an Excel spreadsheet that had a single column called “Name” that contained both first name and last name. City, state and zip were also in a single column. I offered then to clean up the spreadsheet by splitting...

Jan Tielens and Fons Sonnemans , names you're very familiar with if you're a SharePoint Wonk like me, created a very cool SmartPart WebPart : The SmartPart is a generic webpart that can contain an ASP.NET user control. Nothing new you would say, but the SmartPart can give your user control access...

I got an SMS message a while back to install a new update to my Treo 600. I never installed the update before this one -- my phone was working fine, and I didn't want to lose the ringtones that I worked so hard to get ;-) This time, though, I went to the site to check out what was included in the update...

Chris Sells pinged me today to ask about GTD. Actually, it was kind of funny... he sent me an email with the subject line “You've done this, what can you tell me?“ And the body was a link . That's it. When I first saw the subject line I thought it was spam, or even <gasp> porn spam...

After reading in several blogs about David Allen and his book/process Getting Things Done , I decided to give it a try. The set-up has been significant, and I'm not done by any stretch, but I've finished my inbox, and for the first time since the day I started at Microsoft, my inbox is empty! Jeff...

I had to run an errand this afternoon, and as I pulled out of the parking lot, a news story came on NPR talking about a US Post Office announcement about mobile zip codes. Modeled on the rulings that allowed people to take their phone numbers with them, the Assistant Postmaster General was quoted from...

MSDN will have a booth at the product fair that's happening during MVP Summit registration on Sunday evening -- I'll be there for most of the time, and I hope you'll stop by to say hello if we've already met, or introduce yourself if we haven't. If you miss me on Sunday, I've also wrangled an invite...

Tomorrow I'm off to Las Vegas for a few days of winning the casino's money (well that's *my* dream anyway), so I decided to check the weather. It's going to be beautiful, of course, but check out these descriptions, they delighted me :) Someone had some fun making rules. Thursday...

Okay, so it wasn't as easy to get it working as it was to get it put together (not that I did much more than screw in a couple of screws and locate this product manual or that one). Thank goodness for Curtis or I would have been totally at a loss. Get most of the pieces in, hook it up to a monitor, turn...

New computer on the way, woo hoo! That's the good news. Unfortunately, it's coming in pieces. My friend Curtis has agreed to put it together, but I'm guessing (based on past experience) that means that he sits there and tells me what to do. Aside: Curtis is suffering from some delusion that my having...

Heh. I went to my blog just now to look for a link, and there, down the left side, are three pictures of Kevin. The SAME three pictures. I thought it must be Sprint sending multiplies copies of the picture to Textamerica, but it turns out the Textamerica recent image code is broken right now. I know...

A whole week has gone by without a blog entry from me. (Tsk, Tsk as Chris Sells would say, although not about this.) I have a bunch of items in my “add to blog file“, but no time to compose a post around them. I'm heads down in a couple of projects, as well as sticking my nose in here or...

If you live in Washington State, there's still time to make your voice heard today. Look up your Precinct name here . Look up your caucus location here . Caucus starts at 10am, they're right in your neighborhood, so get going!

This weekend I set up the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 external sound card and the Inspire T5400 speakers that I got for my partner for Christmas. Wow, what a difference from her old setup! Except for having to crawl around under the desk, it was all simple to set up, and now our home office has great sound...

I was checking out my referral logs, and found this wonderful piece on the Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do) via Jim Martin's blog . This one's a keeper. Some of the items made me wince; I know they're things I do without thinking. There are some mistakes he points out...

I've played a little with Orkut , the new social networking software. I love the design, it's so clean and functional. Did you notice the title letters are all made with people? This afternoon when I checked my email, there were a bevy of invites and responses, so I was sad to see the notice when I went...

This year, the Democratic party in Washington is opting for a caucus rather than a primary. Caucuses require, in my opinion, much more commitment than voting. You show up, talk, listen to other people talk, move around into groups (hopefully of 15% or more), and vote. The caucus process here in Washington...

Katina Matson. These prints are wow.

I finally found a Mah-Jongg game that I can see on my Treo 600, and boy is it a good one; Shanghai Pocket Essentials by LandWare. Nine tile sets, including easy-to-see Samurai, tons of layouts organized in categories, including smaller layouts called "Quickies" that are perfect for whiling away a few...

As the whole blog transition has wound to a close, and I've ended up with two separate homes, I've been thinking a lot about how I can add value to the community through this blog (other than a series of perhaps interesting, but generally inconsequential, anecdotes ;-) If you're reading this blog, then...

There's been a lot of moving around in the Microsoft blogging world, and in the last couple of days the dust has finally settled , and the new default home for what was once http://blogs.gotdotnet.com is now http://blogs.msdn.com . Lots of people worked really hard to make http://blogs.msdn.com a reality...

Weird. Tonight I went to the store to buy the requisite 6 pounds of M&Ms (it's a Microsoft tradition to treat your team to a pound per year on your anniversary*) and all they had was black and white. Apparently there is some sort of promotion going on - Oh Hey, check this out: 1. Throughout the country...

Like so many others of my compatriots, I've moved into a set of new blog homes. Soon(-ish) my RSS feeds will be redirected so that your news readers should just pick them up. Until then, you can find me and my somewhat work or technology related musings at http://www.geekswithblogs.net/lauraj . Update...