Nobrainer’s Think Tank

For something like 2 years, I have received 2 auto-generated work emails each and every day. I have been unable to auto-filter them because the emails have no subject / empty subject / missing subject. Not that I’ve spent much time on it, but over that period I have been unable to figure out how to have the filter recognize the lack of a subject. Today I finally cracked the code.

In SquirrelMail, the filtering options are these:

• contains
• does not contain
• is
• is not
• matches wildcard
• does not match wildcard
• > is greater than
• >= is greater than or equal to
• > is lower than
• >= is lower than or equal to
• = is equal to
• != is not equal to
• matches regexp
• does not match regexp

In the past I had attempted to use “contains” and then leave the field empty. No dice. Same thing for “is”. Specifying that the subject “is” “null” or “is” “empty” didn’t work. Nor did saying the subject “is” “(no subject)” (as the subject is displayed in the folder view) nor the subject “contains” “(no subject)”.

Recently I suspected the key must be to use the regular expression matching. Alas the “^$” filter did not work, I suspect because there are no empty spaces in the subject line because there literally is no subject and it therefore cannot contain any empty spaces.

Finally, after reading up a bit on the subject (no pun intended), I finally figured out that the wildcard was the key. The ultimate winner was “does not match wildcard” “*”.

I love simple solutions. I just hate it when it takes me forever to find it.

UPDATE 2011-12-26: Back to the drawing board. This worked in trial conditions but has been otherwise failing. Dagnabit!

I’m becoming a bit hesitant to upgrade my versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. It seems with each new version there is some little change that really throws me off (or it has my add-ons disabled for bit to throw me off). My upgrade to Thunderbird 8 was no exception. In the new version I was having problems finding the quick filter functionality. Turns out there was a good reason: one of the stupid old additions was fixed:

There are also new Search and Find keyboard shortcuts alongside numerous security patches and bug fixes.

The new keyboard shortcuts have come about due to an ambiguity between using the [Ctrl] + [F] shortcut to both search using the Quick Filter and within individual messages depending on what was selected. Now [Ctrl] + [F] is used specifically to search within selected messages; to search using the Quick Filter bar, use the brand new [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [K] shortcut instead.

It always bugged me that [Ctrl] + [F] did different things. I think the search functions in Thunderbird still need a lot of help, but this is a god start.

Thanks to BetaNews for having the scoop.

For my work, I’m granted a Verizon Mobile Broadband card. It’s a nice perk, but for the last several months, it hasn’t worked right. It would work fine until I would connect to my work’s VPN (so that I could actually, you know, work). About a minute after connection to the VPN it would go into a dormant state and then disconnect very soon thereafter. Any number of google and bing searches revealed solutions that didn’t solve my problem. Finally, today, I found the fix at the SmarterGeek Blog by Rex Moncrief.

Wrote Rex:

I decided to troubleshoot. After all, I rely on the service when I am not at my office. The first thing I did was try and think of anything that had changed between Tuesday and Wednesday on my machine. My laptop runs a very clean installation of XP Pro – and I know every piece of software that is installed.

Linksys Print Server Utility 1.0
On Tuesday, I was at a client’s office and we installed a Linksys WPSM54G Print Server, which requires the installation of Linksys Print Server Utility 1.0 and naturally Linksys thinks it has to run at start-up. Typically, I would remove software like that from startup, but in my hurry I just hadn’t done it yet.

Funny. I installed some Linksys print server software many months ago when I purchased and installed a Linksys Wireless-G Print Server for my brother. Rex was right, the Linksys software is the problem. I just disabled it and now my Verizon access is being maintained perfectly.

Thanks, Rex!

Allow me to follow up on my initial review of Thunderbird 3.

The new Thunderbird is growing on me. I’m getting used to the new position of buttons at about the same rate I adjust to the change in year. By April, or July if it’s a bad year, I should have it all figured out.

Since my last review, I installed Expression Search, which has made my email searching experience much more pleasant; in fact I like using this form of search far more than both the default Thunderbird and Google Desktop email searches. It appears that my quest for email search nirvana continues.

One bonus of the new Thunderbird is the ability to view email conversations. Sort of. From what I’ve observed, you can see all the participants and their initial remarks, but you can’t view the entire thing. Moreover, the format of the “conversation” in the reader pane is so devoid of contrast that I find it difficult, at least initially, to easily discern who is saying what to whom.

The most important improvement is the ability to open emails in tabs rather than in new windows. I like it for the same reason I liked the inclusion of tabs in the web browser. However, now that Thunderbird has tabs, I feel like there needs to be the option to incorporate Thunderbird directly into Firefox.

onsider this scenario I regularly encounter. In the morning, I awake to find dozens of new messages in my inbox. I triage them by opening the important or interesting ones in tabs. Once I make it through all the new messages, I attack the tabs. Frequently, the message in a tab is a Google News Alert, which, for the unfamiliar, includes possibly dozens of links of which there are a few worth clicking on.

As it happens now, those links open in new tabs in Firefox meaning I have to switch back and forth between the Firefox and Thunderbird windows. I would rather have those tabs open next to the email message I’m reading. There is a clunky extension for Thunderbird called ThunderBrowse, that accomplishes the task of opening web pages in Thunderbird. But it does not do so well. So rather than incorporating the browser into the email client, I think it needs to move in the other direction. It also needs to be more incorporated than the email/browser clients in SeaMonkey, where they’re basically separate programs where one can be used to open the other.

I would like to see the ability to create a dedicated Thunderbird tab, maybe that can be assigned a specific tab position, within Firefox. Then, email messages can be opened in tabs within FF and moved, sorted, maybe even bookmarked, in the same way that web pages are.

This really runs counter to the light, agile, browser concept. I accept that, which is why it should be an optional add on. But considering that 99.9% of the time I have Thunderbird and Firefox open anyway, I doubt there will be much of a change in system performance.

Thanks, Nanny State.

Microsoft was forced to introduce the browser “ballot box” following a ruling by the European Commission that Microsoft’s practice of pre-installing Internet Explorer on every new computer was anti-competitive…

“Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use,” said Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner.

As opposed to opening your browser and freely downloading any of the plethora of free options?

This is what I’ve never understood about the governmental anti-competitive rulings against Microsoft & IE. Users have, I won’t say always, but for as long as I can remember, had the option to download & switch to any browser of their choice. It wasn’t as though Windows ever vetoed a browser and refused to use it.

• I’m becoming convinced that Maryland is home to the worst drivers in the country.
• In my new house I chose FiOS over Cox. The internet has been working well, but I haven’t seen a difference VS Cox (not that I’ve really tried or bothered to benchmark it or anything). The only problem is that the Verizon DNS doesn’t find my work intranet. Fortunately that was easily fixed by telling my router to use OpenDNS.

  Unfortunately I can’t comment on the FiOS TV selections. Long story short, I’ve been seeking permission to install cable jacks in the rooms where I put my TVs and my property management company, which is apparently run by people who are under-qualified to be employed as trained monkeys, has yet to be able to get approval from the owner for those installations (They are also yet to remove the “For Rent” sign, or remove the Realtor’s lockbox from the front door, or have anyone fix a leaky sink).

• I was compelled to install Google Chrome this week after one of my favorite work-related web-pages quit working after I upgraded Firefox. It’s definitely a slick little browser, but I don’t see it replacing Firefox as my default any time soon. It has replaced Safari as my backup work browser, however. (No I didn’t try Opera… I’m just not hardcore geek enough to “get” Opera).
• I’ve also been using Bing more and more, but I have yet to see how it is drastically better than Google. Although Bing Cashback is probably going to get a lot more attention from me as I start to buy presents for Christmas.
• I’m also getting close to pulling the trigger and buying myself a Palm Pre. I was leaning toward getting one after my most recent flights and my desire to be better able to access the internet in the airport. And I was almost to the point of buying one when I found out that Sprint has unlimited data plans that start at $69.99 rather than at $99.99. I have yet to purchase the phone for two reasons. The first has to do with my inept property managers. Because of their ineptness, my roomates and I have been unable to fill our fourth bedroom and therefore I don’t want to sign on to a higher monthly phone bill since my housing bills are higher than I had budgeted them to be. Secondly, I realized that after a while the price tag of the Pre will fall down from the $200 it is now to something more reasonable and that if I’m going to have to wait anyway, that I might as well wait a little longer.
• One more thing, as some of you know I’ve been playing softball all summer in two different leagues. I hadn’t realized how used to a softball I had become until I just found a baseball lying around. Now a baseball seems so tiny… but it still seems right.

PS – The DC Clemson Alumni softball team is much better at drinking than it is at playing softball. That is all.