I am horrible with other people’s important dates, e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, date you got your appendix removed, etc.
I just realized I should put all that info into my Gmail Contacts, and then it will appear on my Google Calendar automatically. Oh wait… It doesn’t show up. Damn. Why doesn’t it work?
Turns out, this obviously valued feature is not turned on by default, but it is available. To get your contacts’ birthdays and other events to show up, simply perform the following in Google Calendar:
Click Settings (the little gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen), then Calendars (link just under the "Calendar Settings" tab), then the Browse Interesting Calendars (lower right) link, then More (under the heading), and finally Subscribe next to the Contacts’ birthdays and events.
Fantastic! Now you, and more importantly, I should have no reason to forget to remind our friends and family a Happy Birthday.
Type: Merlot
Year: 2009
Location: Santa Rosa, California
Rating: 8 out of 10
Opinion: Received as part of my NRA Wine Club membership. Very good Merlot. This wine has notes of cassis, assorted berries, black olive, and mild oak. This wine was enjoyed with cheeseburgers.
Type: Cabernet Sauvignon
Year: 2009
Location: Santa Rosa, California
Rating: 8 out of 10
Opinion: Received as part of my NRA Wine Club membership. Very good cabernet sauvignon. Hints of blackberry, black cherry, and plum. Enjoyed with a nice New York Strip steak.
Type: Zinfandel
Year: 2009
Location: Santa Rosa, California
Rating: 8 out of 10
Opinion: Received as part of my NRA Wine Club membership. Very good zinfandel. This zesty wine has hints of red fruit and cranberry. Enjoyed with pepperoni pizza.
Type: Sauvignon Blanc
Year: 2009
Location: Santa Rosa, California
Rating: 8 out of 10
Opinion: Received as part of my NRA Wine Club membership. Very good Sauvignon Blanc. This refreshing wine has notes of pineapple, lemon, lime, apple, peach, and slight hints of earthy grass.
Type: Pinot Noir
Year: 2009
Location: American Canyon, Napa Valley, California
Rating: 9 out of 10
Opinion: Received as part of my NRA Wine Club membership. Excellent pinot noir. Hints of blackberry, black cherry, and toasted caramel. Enjoyed with pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce.
I have been using this saying for the last 6 years, “Code Review Does Not Have to Suck”. I just saw today that SmartBear, who makes the wonderful CodeCollaborator peer code review tool, which I also use, released a quick 3-minute video explaining this.
Peer code review is a critical milestone step in any good development process; especially with distributed teams. CodeCollaborator, Crucible, and Kiln are all great tools for facilitating peer code review without having to go through all the headache of gathering files, scheduling meetings, pissing off your co-workers, etc.
Check out the video. It’s worth the 3-minutes.
We have a Dell 3115cn color laser printer at work. The color toner cartridges are individual, and we buy them in these multipack deals (Dell Part #4BC3115). The problem is that inside the box are four cartridges wrapped in that silver foil packaging and are not marked as to which color is inside. You never have to replace all four cartridges at once, so it becomes a lottery scratcher to find the cartridge you need.
Each cartridge does have a unique part number on it, but Dell’s website has nothing, nor Google, nor Bing, and Wolfram Alpha politely told me to piss off. For future reference, I am writing down the individual codes and the color cartridge it corresponds to. Hopefully the search bots will pick up this post and save other owners of the 3115cn the same hassle.
I did figure out after decomposing the product numbers, that the important part is after the ‘CN-0′ bit at the beginning. For example, if you Google PF028, you should get a link to Staples website for the Black cartridge. Using the corresponding string section from the other cartridges yields the correct results as well.
Black: CN-0PF028-71971-958-3080
Yellow: CN-0NF555-71971-95D-7143
Magenta: CN-0MF790-71971-95D-1978
Cyan: CN-0RF012-71971-95D-8088
To the entire Green Bay Packers players, coaches, organization, and the city of Green Bay, thank you from the bottom of my heart for a most excellent season, and the best Packers post-season that I have been witness to in my life.
I am and will always and forever be one of your greatest fans.
That is all.
GO GREEN BAY PACKERS!
Ever since I got my Kindle at Christmastime, I was thinking that there should be an application that lets you view your Kindle bookshelf, and share books with friends, share what you are reading, have read, and may recommend. I have been using the weRead on Facebook for quite awhile, but you have to manage the bookshelf manually. This is not a complaint as I have many physical books that would not work with a Kindle-only application, but the majority of books a Kindle owner has will be the electronic formats of the books.
I did a little research this morning and came across the ReadSync Facebook application which syncs with your Amazon Kindle bookshelf. The application lets you view all the books you have sync’d to your Kindle. It lets you share a book on your wall with friends, and even see your friend’s bookshelf (if they are also using the application.) This looks to be exactly what I wanted. The only drawback is those hardcover and paperback books I still happen to pick up from time to time (mostly technical books which I want to quickly be able to thumb through.) For these I will still rely on weRead, unless ReadSync makes an update to allow a reader to manually add books to their bookshelf. I think a hybrid application containing both eBooks and tangible books would satisfy all readers. Maybe I will contact the developer and try to get that ball rolling.
Happy Reading!
