• Whoah – tech news overload!

    Just a quick post after adding a new theme to the site.  Looks like I’m adding a new post yearly now, but I hope to increase that soon.  Daily would be nice.  But what should I say?  Maybe a little about my day and a little tech and politics thrown in for good measure.  Nothing too major, as hopefully I’ll start putting other sites online that will deal with the serious stuff!

    As a Minnesotan, I’m currently suffering through watching Minnesota sports.  At this point, they’re ALL BAD.  The Twins, who’ve won the division nearly every year for the past 10 years or so, now have the worst record in the majors.  I personally hope they trade many veterans for a good mix of minor-leaguers and future draft picks.  It’s time to rebuild.  But with Mauer’s contract and Kubel’s production, I’d keep ’em both.  Then move Mauer to 1st base as catching doesn’t seem to be in his long-term future with the Twins.

  • Easy money – buy some Apple stock now

    How Much of a Bargain Is Apple Stock Right Now? | The Money Times
    Last I checked earlier today, Apple stock (AAPL) was hovering around $380/share.  By end of year, expect it to be around $500.  Believe it.

    Two things are going to happen in the next few months that will make that a reality.  First, the iPhone 5 will be out.  It will sell even better than the last few iPhones and now is selling to many more countries than a year ago.  And two, the Steve Jobs authorized biography will be the #1 book in America when it’s released in November.

  • I’m still here

    Haven’t really posted anything here since I began the site last October. Well, maybe I still won’t, but my goal is to make this site self-updating by pulling all my data from other sites into this one. That way, you can get all of the Mac updates in one place. I’m sure this will be a popular site. 😉

  • Stop the annoying “Updating Your Computer is Almost Complete” Message

    The full message is “Updating your computer is almost complete.  You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect”.

     

    There are 2 methods to put a stop to this message.  One will stop it permanently, but depending on your environment (locked down policies at at your company), it may not work.  The other will work until you reboot your computer.

     

    Let’s start with the easy, temporary fix. 

    1. Click the Start button

    2. Choose the Run command

    3. Type in sc stop wuaserv and click ok.

     

    The windows update icon will disappear from your system tray and you’re home free…until you reboot and more updates are installed.

     

    Now for the permanent fix.

    1. Click Start, Run, then type in gpedit.msc

    2. In the application that appears, click on Computer Configuration under Local Computer Policy and then click on the + sign to the left of Administrative Templates.

    3. Click the + sign next to Windows Components, and then click on Windows Update.

    4. On the screen to the right, double-click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.  Cick the Disabled radiobox and then click OK.

    5. Close this application.

    6. Go to Start, Run, then type in gpupdate.exe /force and press enter or click OK.

     

    The last step needs to be done to apply the policy update immediately, but may not work if you are using a work computer and they have the policies locked down.

     

    That’s it.  Comment with questions.

  • Any deals now at Circuit City?

    From what I hear, no such luck. The liquidation sales at Circuit City are for the most part only 10% off. Some video game & accessories may be up to 20 to 30% off, but still most, if not all items can be found cheaper elsewhere (ie. Amazon).

    I expect that prices will continue to decrease week by week, so if you’re lucky, you could pick up some good stuff for a great price in the next month.

  • ReQlogic Punchout w/ Invalid Characters

    At work, one of the applications I am responsible for is called ReQlogic. It’s a 3rd-party requisitioning product and is integrated with Microsoft Dynamics SL (Solomon). There are about 400+ users of this app here at Life Time Fitness, so it’s an important one!

    We’ve had a lot of random issues with it ever since it was installed, but it also has been a big time-saver as well. The latest issue (resolved) was that we received an error every now & then when attempting to submit a punchout order to Staples.

    After some troubleshooting, I determined the problem to be a pair of invalid characters (“ and ”) within the description field in the cxml. I was able to dynamically replace many other invalid characters by editing the punchoutpo.aspx file on the server, but these just wouldn’t play nice.

    The final solution was to manually edit a sql view called xwv_po_purchord. All that was needed was to alter the code below

    L.TRANDESC AS TRANDESC
    to
    Replace(Replace(L.TRANDESC,'“','"'),'”','"')

    What this code did was just replace the invalid quotes with a pair of valid quotes. Now the cxml submits just fine & dandy.

  • Me on the web – Version2

    So, finally, I have started work on macriddel.com. The Mac Riddel site to end all Mac Riddel sites. It will be the center of my life on the web, and hopefully will pull in my activity from other social networking sites like facebook, flickr, twitter, etc. We’ll see how that works…

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