Microsoft Office 2007 Options and About
Posted by Kevin in 
You know how easy it was to look at program information by going to “Help > About”? Or maybe you are used to going to “Tools > Options” Not so easy in Microsoft Office 2007.
Here’s how to find “Options”:
- Click on the orb up at the top left.
- Down at the bottom right click “Word Options”.
- Continue on to find “About”.
- Now pick “Resources”.
- Over on the right you can see an About button.
There you go.
Oh and by the way, Microsoft Office 2010 brings back the familiar “File Edit View…” toolbar (albeit in a fancy new design). Still, hooray!
Overriding Rails’ automatic timestamps: updated_at & created_at
When converting something in a project, I found that I needed to updated a field for every record in a Request table. No problem, except this client grabs a SQL dump and run reports on it. So, Rails’ automatic timestamping of the updated_at field made all of the Requests look like they’d just been updated. Which they had, but not by users.
So, this rake task will reset all of them, presuming you have something to set them to. In my case, I found the latest comment date and used that, but you could figure it out some other way.
git: pull is not possible because you have unmerged files.
I saw this error message the other day and I had no clue what it meant. I’d never seen that error before!
For reference, I was trying to pull from a remote branch and got the error message:
Pull is not possible because you have unmerged files.
A google search revealed this commit (d38a30df7dd54c5c6883) to the git source on January 12, 2010.
The error messages have been updated to be much clearer. Before, you’d get “needs merge” or “error building trees” errors, which didn’t really mean much.
In this case, I was pulling in many commits and had a conflict partway through. I just needed to resolve the files, add/delete them, commit the result and then continue with the pull.
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Jammit Warning: Asset compression disabled — Java unavailable (Mac/Apple)
I set up Jammit locally on my Mac running Leopard and was receiving this error:
Jammit Warning: Asset compression disabled -- Java unavailable
I checked out Java:
> java -version java version "1.5.0_22" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_22-b03-333-9M3125) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_22-147, mixed mode, sharing)
Odd. Poking into the jammit source, I saw that java 1.4 is required to use the YUI javascript compressor, but I had selected the google closure compiler which requires java 1.6, hence the [unclear] error message.
On Leopard, if you’ve run all your System Updates, you probably have java 1.6, but you have to select it as the default: Applications > Utilities > Java Preferences > drag new version to top
Kansas City Ruby Users: Luke Pillow on Jeweler
Luke Pillow present to the Kansas City Ruby Users Group on Jeweler and Gemcutter rubygems.org.
Also, Luke is helping to organize the Ruby Midwest conference, so you should check that out.
Kansas City Ruby Users Group | March 2010 | Luke Pillow | Jeweler for Rubygems | kcrug.org from Wes Garrison on Vimeo.
Kansas City Ruby Users: Ryan Smith on Heroku
Ryan Smith presents to the Kansas City Ruby Users Group on Heroku: why it’s wonderful for deploying Ruby on Rails applications, how to set up a new application and deploy it to Heroku in minutes, and how to use Heroku add-ons to support search.
Kansas City Ruby Users Group | March 2010 | Ryan Smith | Heroku | kcrug.org from Wes Garrison on Vimeo.
Installing A Virtual Machine With Dell OEM Disks
If you’re willing to put in the effort (and assuming you’re legal), it could work, but I’d suggest using a retail license which avoids the caveats you’ll soon be reading about below:
First, some helpful information:
OEM Dell installation CDs depend on the SLP code in the Dell BIOS for activation. If the installation program can’t see the real bios, it can’t activate. With a commercially purchased installation CD this is not a problem as you have a COA that can be activated on line or by phone. OEM installation CDs cannot be activated on line, and since Dell is responsible for support of an OEM disk that was issued by Dell, Microsoft will not normally give you an activation key if you call them. You can try the phone method, of course, since so far as I can tell you are running only Windows XP Pro rather than both Vista and Windows XP. Once you explain what you are doing they might grant you an activation code.
If you are installing an OEM version onto a virtual machine, it will not activate as it cannot see the BIOS String of the real Dell machine. It is only seeing the Virtual BIOS which doesn’t have the SLP String to activate.
How to resolve this:
- Boot up XP Pro VM installation, and select the Telephone activation option for the XP activation.
- Call MS. Try to go on to speak to a representative to explain further.
- Here it’s important to explain exactly what you’re doing to the rep — Explain that you simply want to activate this one XP license, on the Dell with which it was purchased, but you are doing so in a virtual machine. They can quickly confirm why it’s not working, due to not seeing the real BIOS.
- You should end up transferred to the Product Key Team.
- Once connected with the Product Key Team, they should provide you with a new product key (after confirming you are installing XP on the Dell that it came with and installing just one instance) there are a couple more steps — after entering the new product key, give the new activation code to the rep, get the confirmation to enter in the activation screen; and with luck, success!
“warning: updating the current branch” when pushing to a git repository
I pushed some changes after updating git on my server to git 1.6+ and now I get this:
$ git push origin master ... warning: updating the current branch warning: Updating the currently checked out branch may cause confusion, warning: as the index and work tree do not reflect changes that are in HEAD. warning: As a result, you may see the changes you just pushed into it warning: reverted when you run 'git diff' over there, and you may want warning: to run 'git reset --hard' before starting to work to recover. warning: warning: You can set 'receive.denyCurrentBranch' configuration variable to warning: 'refuse' in the remote repository to forbid pushing into its warning: current branch. warning: To allow pushing into the current branch, you can set it to 'ignore'; warning: but this is not recommended unless you arranged to update its work warning: tree to match what you pushed in some other way. warning: warning: To squelch this message, you can set it to 'warn'. warning: warning: Note that the default will change in a future version of git warning: to refuse updating the current branch unless you have the warning: configuration variable set to either 'ignore' or 'warn'.
Woah! After some research, this is because I didn’t set up my remote folder as “bare”. A non-bare repository has a working copy attached to it, and this warning is telling you that said working copy exists and is currently checked out to the branch you’re trying to push to.
This is bad, because if you were pushing to a co-worker’s machine, then when they go to commit or run a diff, things will go awry. In this case, I just didn’t set up the repository correctly (it was the first one I’d done!) so I wasn’t in danger of losing anything.
The fix is to use --bare:
git init --bare or git clone --bare
Installing sqlite headers on ubuntu (sqlite3.h not found)
I was setting up Integrity for the first time and ran into this on my server when bundling gems:
~$ bundle install ... Installing do_sqlite3 (0.10.0) from rubygems repository at http://gemcutter.org/ with native extensions /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/installer.rb:482:in `build_extensions': ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError) /usr/bin/ruby1.8 extconf.rb checking for sqlite3.h... no *** extconf.rb failed *** ...
The key is the line: checking for sqlite3.h... no
The do_sqlite3 gem gets compiled natively, but the development headers weren’t installed on the system and so the compilation won’t work.
Install them:
~$ sudo apt-get install sqlite3 ~$ sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
Then, re-bundle:
~$ bundle install