If I’d done that first, I’d have found the rubber snake that was mashing down multiple keys and preventing the computer from booting. And I would have saved myself a good 45 minutes.

Still, not bad for a Monday.

December 6, 2006 is my last day at NewsGator.

I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Nick Bradbury better as well as work closely with the rest of the team at NewsGator. And it’s been very cool participating in the (lea/blee)ding edge of the RSS space. But after a year-and-a-half, I’ve decided that working from home just isn’t for me. As I like to joke (and my geek physique confirms), I miss birthday cake.

Now that I’m back in Olympia (after that bit of adventure of moving to Las Vegas which was the motivation for getting the job with NewsGator in the first place), an opportunity came up to go back to work in the IT department at the same school district that I left. I really enjoyed that environment and doing my small part for education, so I jumped at the chance. (Remember to vote “YES” on any school district bonds or levies that finance technology. The job you save may be mine. ;))

Special thanks to Ronnie Gilbertson (get a blog, dude) and Jonathon McDougall for being such a great team to work with. Those guys really care about NewsGator’s customers and I feel good knowing that they’re still there as our advocates.

I’m still a TopStyle and FeedDemon fanboy, so I’ll be hanging out in the forums; I’ll just be doing support for free again. (I still expect to have access to pre-releases, Mr. Bradbury.)

I really am much obliged, NewsGator. Thanks for the pleasant stay.

A couple of years ago, my wife got me a way-friggin’-cool MX 700 cordless rechargeable mouse. It accompanied me to many a LAN party but died while we were in Vegas. Maybe it was the dry heat? Or maybe the lack of LAN-lovin’ (never did find a LAN group there…).

I never managed to throw it out, thinking I’d find something to make it work. I actually got very close to throwing it out a couple weeks ago as I made the final push to getting my office unpacked. In fact, I even thought I had thrown it away. I was talking about the mouse with a friend of mine the other day and he mentioned that I should give them a call. Turns out, that particular mouse has a five year warranty (needless to say, my jaw dropped when I read that).

So I rifled through my bins-o-geek-stuff and managed to find the mouse and gave them a call. After explaining the problem and being put on hold a moment, the tech informs me that they’re going to send me a new mouse. No shipping charge and no need to ship the dead rat back.

Sure, the replacement, an MX 1000, isn’t one of their current models (in fact it doesn’t even have a product page on their site) but it is an upgrade to the unit I have right now and did I mention that this is a no-hassle warranty replacement?!?

Looking around my office as I type this, I’ve got three Logitech mice. I know there’s another one on my wife’s laptop, and I think I have an emergency spare still stashed away in my bins. With support like this, I’m certain that my next mouse will also be a Logitech. Heck, maybe even my next keyboard, but that assumes that both of my MS Natural Keyboard Pros will die and I refuse to even consider that possibility – they’re the sweetest ergonomic keyboards ever!

In Windows, you can copy the text of many OS or program error messages using the standard Windows copy keyboard shortcut; Ctrl+C.

The nice thing about this is that it copies all the text from the dialog in plain text, so it’s easy to paste into an email or forum when asking for tech support. Much cleaner than mucking about with screenshots and saves the person helping you from having to type (or more likely mistype) any critical information from the error while trying to reproduce or troubleshoot the problem.