Household Projects

The Backyard Office – Part II

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Originally posted on October 9, 2010

Continued from The Backyard Office – Part I

Now with the shell of the structure in place, it was time to tackle the interior. I spent quite a bit of time planning what I wanted the finished version of the interior to look like and what features I wanted to support. Adding things to the office (like electrical outlets) is much easier to do when there is nothing but studs on the inside. Trust me, you do not want to have to add anything major once you’ve got the drywall up and finished! Continue reading The Backyard Office – Part II →

Household Projects

The Backyard Office – Part I

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Originally posted on September 26, 2010

With the approaching birth of our second child, it became obvious that our 3 bedroom home was going to get a lot less spacious…and that I would have to give up my “office”. I use the term office a bit loosely since it is really a room to house my toys (i.e., computers, CDs, guitars, gadgets, etc.). I do actually work quite a bit from home as well, so it does have to function as a real office too. Having a spare bedroom in the house is very convenient, but explaining to your two kids why they have to share a room just so daddy can have an office might out weigh the advantages. Continue reading The Backyard Office – Part I →

Dev

Querying a database directly from UltraEdit

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(This post was originally published April 23, 2009)

Using UltraEdit’s powerful external tool integration, this article will show you how to submit an SQL query directly from UltraEdit and have the results returned directly to the editor.

This example uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000, but the basic technique can be applied to most any database tool. Continue reading Querying a database directly from UltraEdit →

Dev, Windows

Adding an Automatic BCC to Outlook

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(This post was originally published April 23, 2009)

Note: This article is a bit out of date (in regards to newer versions of Outlook), but contains some interesting information in the comments section (which is reproduced here). At some point I will bring this article up to date, since I might have some new use cases for this functionality (i.e., automatically archiving posts to Evernote).

By using the built-in rules in Outlook you can automatically CC an email address on outgoing messages (and even specify additional criteria like keywords in subject lines, etc.), but there is no option to use BCC. This article will show how to modify Outlook to automatically BCC an email address on all outgoing messages. Continue reading Adding an Automatic BCC to Outlook →

Windows

Preventing an automatic reboot after Windows Update runs

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If you have Windows Update set to run in the middle of the night (as most of us do), it is rather annoying to return to your computer in the morning only to find that it has automatically rebooted due to an installed update. There is a way to prevent this from occurring, but it does require a registry hack (Windows XP/Vista/7/8).

  • Run regedit and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindows
  • Create a new key under Windows and call it WindowsUpdate
  • Create a new key under WindowsUpdate called AU
  • With AU selected, in the right-hand pane right-click and create a new DWORD. Call itNoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
  • Double-click the DWORD and give it a value of 1.
  • Reboot and Windows Update will stop automatically rebooting your computer.