Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. – Ambrose Bierce
Archive for June, 2009
Outlook 2002 freezes when opening an attachment on a draft e-mail message
I still have a few users who use Outlook 2002. For the most part, they don’t have any reason to upgrade as it still meets their needs and I can’t justify telling them to spend ~$300 per user just to do what they’re already doing (sending/receiving e-mail… If I had my way, they’d all be using Thunderbird.) Today however, I encountered the following bug:
(1) User composes an e-mail (using word as their mail editor). The user also attaches either a word, excel, or powerpoint attachment to the message (tested with all three file types).
(2) User saves the message to drafts.
(3) A little while later, the user decides to finish writing this e-mail. They casually double click the attachment (in this case, a word document) link below the subject line and get the following message:
No big deal right? We’ve all seen this before. But there’s a problem! When they try to click on the ‘Open it’ option, Outlook is unresponsive. The only thing they can do at this point is kill OUTLOOK.EXE via the task manager. What makes this even weirder is that if the user re-opens Outlook, navigates to the ‘Drafts’ folder, opens the message and instead right-clicks the attachment, then selects ‘Open’ from the context menu, the problem does not manifest itself when the user tries to click the ‘Open it’ option on the subsequent warning message.
In this case, the user is accessing Outlook via a Terminal Services session, so upon being notified by the user that “my Outlook is frozen”, I login and take over their session. I do not notice a problem; I was able to click on the ‘Open it’ option just fine and Outlook was responsive. The user was happy that I fixed their problem and all was well… until it happened again. And again. So now I’m in WTF mode. I was able to recreate the error—it occurs whenever you (1) are composing a message with an attachment, and then double click on the attachment or (2) do the same thing from a message saved in ‘Drafts’. Right-clicking and selecting ‘Open’ _always_ works however. After googling for a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that this had something to do with “Advanced Text Services” so I disabled it, closed Outlook, logged out, logged in, opened Outlook, tried to recreate the error again and everything worked just fine!
To disable Advanced Text Services (in Windows XP/2003 … probably others):
- Click Start, then Control Panel.
- If Control Panel is in Category view, click the Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options link, and then click the Regional and Language Options icon.
If Control Panel is in Classic view, double-click the Regional and Language Options control panel. - Click the Languages tab. Click Details.
- Click the Advanced tab. Check Turn off advanced text services.
- Click OK. Click OK.
- Close the control panel
Or, if you’d like to disable this feature automatically (via domain login script), click here.
MAS 200 Error: “Unable to spawn a new session. The command line required for the server process is too long”
If you’ve recently moved MAS 200 data from one server to another, you might encounter the following error:
Unable to spawn a new session. The command line required for the server process is too long
There are a few things to check before calling Sage’s tech support:
(1) Permissions
Yep. Permissions. It’s a simple mistake to make and it’s easily resolved.
- Just navigate to ‘C:\Program Files\Sage Software’ (or wherever your MAS 200/90 installation resides.
- Right-click on the ‘MAS 200′ directory, select ‘Properties’.
- Select the ‘Security’ tab and select the ‘Advanced’ button.
- Make sure that the permissions are correct; if not, correct them.
- Then check the box next to: ‘Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects’
- Then click ‘Apply’.
- Click ‘Ok’ on the warning that appears.
- Click ‘Ok’ to close the window.
(2) If #1 doesn’t fix your problem, then clear the ‘Spawn Session from Application Server’ check box.
Note: Do not perform this step if the check box was selected to resolve connection issues, for example “Connection failure to host…”
- Expand Modules, Library Master, and Main. Double-click User Maintenance.
- Select the user ID.
- Click the Preferences tab.
- Clear the Spawn Session from Application Server check box.
- Click Accept.
- Repeat for each affected user.
(3) If the error still occurs, and the report is on the Custom Reports menu, the path and file name may be too long.
- Delete the report from the Custom Menu.
- Rename the file to a shorter name. Note: Try 55 characters or less for the entire path and file name. Some experimentation may be required. The exact length that causes the error is still being researched (as of v. 4.0)
- Add the report back to the Custom Menu.
If you are *still* having the problem then you should call MAS 200 tech support.
Moving data from ProSystem Fx Tax to fresh installation
Here’s the scenario:
(1) You’re about to upgrade your server (terminal server, file server, etc) and you’d like to copy all of your old ProSystem Fx Tax data to a new installation.
(2) You have a clean installation of the ProSystem Fx Tax software on the new server
Make sure nobody is currently running the program in either server and just copy the following directories:
c:\wfx32\Client c:\wfx32\Database c:\wfx32\officegr c:\wfx32\user
from the old (source) server, to the “wfx32″ directory (or whatever your installation directory for ProSystem Fx Tax is) to the destination server. If you have multiple years installed, you’ll want to ensure that the programs are all on the same version (as a precaution). This has been tested on version 2008.03000 and previous versions.
That should be all there is to it!
Autoresponse 1.6.3 (bugfix) Released
1072 days
Autoresponse 1.6.3 has been released. This is a bugfix release that fixed an issue with “case sensitive” e-mail addresses. Basically, UsEr@domain.tld or USER@DOMAIN.TLD — both valid addresses, were not able to set an autoresponse message for user@domain.tld (…after the user authenticated with the server via SASL of course). This is no longer an issue thanks to this release.
So much for being “pro life”
I know I’m a day late on this one but as always I’d like to say a few things. First of all, my condolences to the family of Dr. George Tiller. He was shot on Sunday morning—in the lobby of his church, while serving as an usher. Police have arrested the suspect and have yet to release his name. The motive seems to be pretty clear though; Tiller ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. His clinic has been the subject of attacks in the past; it was bombed in 1985 and Tiller himself was wounded in 1993 when a member of the anti-choice movement shot him in both arms. It is worth noting that Tiller’s clinic is one of only a few clinics in the nation that performed late-term abortions, or abortions after the 21st week of pregnancy.
This comes on the heels of the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a supporter of women’s rights, to the Supreme Court. I can’t help but wonder if all the right-wing hate talk surrounding the Sotomayor nomination that has been flooding the airwaves last week was the final straw that pushed Tiller’s assailant to commit such a brazen act. In a church lobby no less.
Sadly, this isn’t an isolated incident. As I’ve said before, Tiller was attacked at least twice in the past, but he’s just one statistic:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_viol.htm
http://msnbc.com/modules/clinics/
There’s a couple of pages of statistics detailing violence against abortion clinics and their employees. I think that it’s safe to say that these attacks originate from the fringes of the conservative, so-called “pro-life” movement—I don’t think that the majority of conservatives condone violence (at least not overtly) against abortion clinics or their employees, but comments like these (from twitter) sure make me wonder:
http://carnalnation.com/content/7628/3/tweets-hate-crazy-right-twitters-about-murder-dr-tiller
Ignorant cowards.
It doesn’t take much thought to see the irony here: a member of the so-called “pro-life” (read: anti-choice) movement murdering an abortionist. Make no mistake, this IS a case of religiously motivated violence… this IS religious extremism.
I want to make it clear that I’m completely opposed to late-term abortions except in rare instances where the life of the mother is at stake. Other than that, I’m pro-choice, but not because I *like* abortions or because I’m evil or immoral, or whatever else the anti-choice movement would say about me. Having a child is a huge commitment, and it’s a decision that should not be taken lightly. This is also a decision that males should just stay the fuck out of (for the most part). Our contribution to baby-making is fairly simple; we’re not the ones whose bodies go through massive, sometimes life-threatening changes in order to bring a child to term. Ironically, it’s usually the male in the relationship who can’t commit and pushes the female to get an abortion… and if she refuses? But I digress…
Legal abortions are a necessary alternative to illegal, often fatal, “back alley” abortions. I’ve brought up this point with anti-choicers, and their response is usually arrogant and condescending: “Well she shouldn’t have been having sex outside of marriage anyway” or something along that line. This seems to serve a dual purpose; it opens the door a little for some good old-fashioned proselytizing while reinforcing the idea that only “bad” people have abortions. I’ve long suspected that anti-choicers see pregnancy as both a blessing and a punishment—a blessing between married couples, and punishment for non-married couples. Many religious people whom I’ve spoken to on this subject, even view birth control methods (the pill, condoms, etc.) with the same contempt that many others reserve only for abortion. It just seems to me that the anti-choice movement is obsessed with controlling every aspect of everyone else’s sexual and reproductive decisions. And when they aren’t spewing forth religious rhetoric to justify their stance, they claim to be defending the unborn—a position that they clearly haven’t thought out too well because it begs the question, “Does every egg or sperm cell count as potential child?” I ask this question in response to the question “When does life begin?”
For any anti-choicers who have gotten this far into this post, brace yourselves because we might be in agreement on something: I believe that life begins either before conception or the moment of. I believe this, because as I write, millions and millions of cells in my body are going about their daily lives, carrying out critical, life supporting tasks, while being completely unaware that I exist… yet they are alive nonetheless. Expanding on this point, some might wonder how I could be pro-choice. I’d say that I’m pro-choice by default; I’m pro-choice because the alternatives are much worse. If a woman doesn’t want to carry a child to term then she shouldn’t have to (regardless of her reasons), and there should be a safe, legal way to handle this. Then at what point should we say that abortion is no longer an option? I think that once the fetus has measurable brainwave activity (around 25 weeks into the pregnancy) the mother should have made up her mind (in my opinion she’s had enough time by this point) and abortion should not be an option… hence, my opposition to late-term abortions. We could be here all day talking about options that do not include abortion, but they all miss the point: history has shown us that if a woman does not wish to carry a child to term, she will find a way to end the pregnancy; usually at great risk to herself. As for the religious justification for being anti-choice? Mind your own damn business. Not everyone believes as you do; the United States is a secular nation, not a nation that panders to any particular religious point of view (although sometimes I wonder)… get over it.
