How a year flies by. It really is kind of amazing.

There will be, of course, the inevitable question of how we like it here so far. The answer is quite simple really… We should have waited until a bit longer in our global travels to come here, perhaps lived in a few more places before living here. Life here is really agreeing with us and at the moment we can’t see going anywhere else.

The nice thing is that with a month off from work each year, more if I choose to, we can up and go anywhere we’d like to. There’s quite a bit of Australia to explore - let alone Southeast Asia and beyond.

And you’re probably wondering what exactly has happened to the site… If you’ll notice, all the stories from Australia are missing. That’s due to two people actually - my web host and myself. See, the problem started with my host who decided to shred not only my databases, but the backups as well. The reason it’s also my fault is that I can’t find any of my own database backups either. So, this evening I had to re-convert my old site back into this new format, and basically start over.

Fortunately, all the stories from Egypt are still around - I didn’t lose any of those (or at least none that I notice). Most of the ones regarding Australia were pretty much pointing to various photo outings anyways, things that are all up on An Orange Penguin… You can find all the photos here.

I do find it kind of funny that one year ago I put up our first post here from Australia and today I am basically doing the exact same thing again.

So, as much as I don’t like birthdays, I do have to admit there’s a candle on this cake…

It's been a very eventful few weeks, with over a week spent in Kenya and Tanzania on safari.  In short, it was simply stunning and I can't wait to share stories and photos with you.

But I'll have to wait, because for the next few days at least time is going to be incredibly short yet again and there are big changes on the horizon.  More on that coming in a bit.

He would walk up to a building and call.  Every few seconds he would repeat and eventually move on to the next building.  People would walk out to their balcony and either stare at him (as we did) or they would throw something down to him.  Others would walk to him and hand him something.

Every item handed to him seemed identical and appeared to be a white ball, or something balled up and white.  Didn't matter if it was tossed or handed to him.  Our bowab's wife gave him something.  Asking her wouldn't get us anywhere, she doesn't speak a single word of english and appears to believe that we speak Arabic - that or she gets a kick out of speaking quickly to us and watching us try to process.

We don't think that he was a beggar, more that he was collecting alms.  I'm pretty sure I'm catching Mohammad in there, the name of the prophet, and "Misr", the Egyptian word for the country of Egypt.

But as I got lucky with a translation for the Mystery Mail, perhaps I'll have the same luck this time.

Guesses are welcome in the comments.  Fame and no fortune are yours if you guess correctly before the answer is posted - should I get one.

Mystery Guest #2 video

Oh yea, the answer to the first Mystery Guest quiz has been posted.

But I did have to share this.  It pretty much sums up the school - the clear confusion, the poor communication, the belittling tone, the obfuscation of facts, the deliberate misleading and blatent lying.  The memo below is a lot more amusing if you have any kind of computer knowledge, though you certainly don't need to in order to recoil in horror.

It was written by two administrators of the school.  Allegedly these men are educated.  I leave it up to you to decide from what you see. 

In Vista, Alt+Tab hasn't changed much, except that instead of program icons you have little thumbnails of the different programs. No big deal, something very similar has been available as a Powertoy from Microsoft for XP for a long time now.  

Vista brought about the first major addition to switching applications by a keyboard shortcut - Win+Tab.  That's the Windows key + Tab.  This sends all your open windows into a vertically stacked, 3/4 view, rainbow shaped, eye candy buffet.

It looks neat, I'm not sold on the practical aspect of it but I suppose that someone else may find it really beneficial.  I'm prefectly content with the classic Alt+Tab.  The main reason I'm content with it is because it lets me work and switch applications faster.  Alt+tab, Excel instantly pops up.  Alt+Tab, my chat window is instantly up. Alt+Tab, Excel is instantly back again.

The problem with Win+Tab is that in order for it to be cool eye candy, it has to whizz and whir and animate all the windows into position.  It's a short delay, but it's a delay, and it gets old after a while.

Here's the other problem, and this one will keep me from ever using Win+Tab again.  It does not work like Alt+Tab.  That's right, it's a different set of keyboard shortcuts.  This is like changing Alt+B so that it's not Bold anymore.

Hit Win+Tab, all the windows animate, Excel pops up.  Win+Tab, all the windows animate, chat pops up.  Win+Tab, all the windows animate, Word pops up.

Word?  What's with the different application?  Why didn't my original app come back?  This is the way it's worked for what, about 20 years now? 

See, Win+Tab just cycles through all the apps in order until you find the one you want.  You have to know one of two secrets to get it to go backwards.  You can hit Win+Tab to go into Flip 3D and then use the scroll wheel on the mouse to go scroll forwards and backwards (I thought this was a keyboard shortcut), or you can hit Win+Shift+Tab to go backwards.  Or was that Win+Ctrl+Tab?

This is like having to hit Ctrl+Shift+B on something to make it not bold anymore - pointless. 

Not only do you have to remember two key combinations now, you have the added issue of "did I go forward or backwards to get to this app?  Hmmm.  Win+Shift+Tab.  Rats, that's Word, not Excel.  Win+Tab, Win+Tab.  Even with the scroll wheel you still have the same issue, but to a lesser degree.  But why do I need a mouse for a keyboard shortcut?  If I wanted the mouse I'd just click on the app on the taskbar.

Flip 3D is dead to me.  Long live Alt+Tab. 

The premise is pretty useful, you type what you want into a box and it magically appears so you can select it whether it be a document, program, song, whatever you wish. It's brought up by pressing the Windows key (usually between CTRL and ALT) and is the default item in the Start menu.

I'm not going into the technical details of how it works and I'll sum up how well it works by just saying "not very well". Really. It feels slow, clunky, and doesn't find everything - more on that in a moment.

Here's the biggest issue I have with it. When you search for something, say "phone number" above you can do nothing else until the search is complete and you select what you want. What? Yes, if you click off the start menu or go to anything else, it disappears and your search is gone. However long the search takes, that's how long you're sitting there.

Think a few seconds isn't long? Just sit there and stare at the period at the end of this sentence and count to five. Don't forget to say Mississippi.

This is not how I work. On Google Desktop Search, or in a browser, or wherever I search from I can enter what I want and go to something else while it does it's looking. The results sit there until I'm done with it.

Making me sit and wait for the search results is simply inexcusable.

To make matters worse, it's not a very good search engine - so the time you spend sitting there staring at the screen may not yield what you're looking for even though it does exist. Here's a small example from when I was trying to solve my "Why won't Office update?" problem.

I needed to find a specific file - mapisvc to be precise. I typed it into the box on the Start menu and got nothing. So I tried the other search on the Start menu, no idea why that's there - how many Searches do I need?

Joy. File not found. And for you technical folk, I did change the areas that Search indexes so that it looked at the whole computer. By default Search only searches Documents and a few other places. My guess is that it's so slow they didn't want to cripple it out of the gate.

But I know the file exists, because I eventually gave up and hunted it down by hand…

I've selected it for you so you can see where it is.

Brand new fangled search - 0; Searching old school by hand - 1

Confidence in new search - none.

I did eventually get search to find a copy of this file:

Here's a bonus question for all you out there.  If found the file - but where is it located? 

I just realized that I had to brush off my computer twice already this morning because the keys had gotten gritty. My phone looks like I haven't touched it in a week, and I had two calls this morning.

Time to close the windows.

Update: All over now as quickly as it started. Nice day now, actually. I wonder how often these come around.

Inexplicably, as you can see, Vista seems to think that I have a tablet PC. While my wife does (and loves it), I don't think it's that smart to know that small detail. I on the other hand, do not. Why they decided to put this in by default, or why it thought that I actually had one is beyond me. Personally I think it points to the overall poor quality of the release.

Tablet PC features do nothing but take up space on my system so while I was turning on Solitaire, I thought I might get rid of the unnecessary Tablet PC stuff.

However, one of the first tools that I found when I started up Vista was the Snipping Tool. Ah, now they've got it right, they included a nice, small window/screen capture utility. As a guy who takes a lot of screenshots (for things like this) I thought it was great. No more SnagIt for me.

Unfortunately, as you can see above, it's a package deal. You get all the Tablet PC features or you get none of them. Why you can't pick and choose individual pieces like the Games section above is painful. I just want the Snipping Tool.

(Who named that? It sounds like something a Vet uses.)

And as it's named "Tablet PC Optional Components", what other Tablet PC specific features are lurking underneath the surface taking up unnecessary space? Is this why Vista is taking up nearly 8gb of my 100gb drive?

But in the end of the day it didn't really matter. The Snipping Tool has two major failings: it puts a bright red border around every screen or window capture saving it in the resulting file, and it doesn't scroll windows.

SnagIt wins and I'm not even sure it knew it was in a fight. I sure didn't until it was all over and I just unchecked the box to remove it all.

It's like pulling away from a Fiat Panda at a light. You may have been in a race, but you didn't need to know that detail against something that takes 20 seconds to hit 60mph. There's no glory in that win.

As far as not removing individual features goes, perhaps Microsoft knew the Snipping Tool was a sad utility and planned ahead for someone wanting to get rid of it all together.

Often, these bubbles will display something that you want more information on - if you click on them they'll launch a program that it referred to.  Handy, and if you don't want to see them, they just go away - usually.

After installing a new program I was asked to reboot (glad that Microsoft kept that tradition, I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have to restart my computer every time I installed something) I was presented the message bubble seen below.

The call to action is great - "Click to view blocked programs".  Nice.  I get to see what it's not letting run that wants to run automatically. 

So I click on the bubble and do you know what happens?

Nothing.  Well, technically it just disappeared.  That's something.  But nothing else happened.  No panel showing what was blocked, just nothing.

It's like someone asking you to pull their finger, and then all they do is look at you.  There's just no fun in that, and no one has a laugh.

This is perhaps the biggest issue I have with Vista - it's painfully inconsistent.  Sometimes these bubbles stay until you close them.  Sometimes they disappear on their own.  Sometimes you get something if you click on them, other times you just get the surprise of nothing.

Vista just leaves you figuring it out for yourself.  And as we've seen from some of the messages that appear, that can often take a lot of work.

I just returned from shopping and when I returned I found something had been slipped under the door. I've got no idea what it is, but it's official (see the green stamp?) and I owe 8.11 EGP to someone.

Want to know how I know that? See the numbers on the right side? The upside down V, the (I hope) comma and the two 1's with the underline that has a circle on it?

The upside down V is an 8. That better be a comma because if it's not it's a zero, and the two that look like 1's are actually 1's.

The underline with the circle means "guinay", or money.

The worrysome part is the column to the left. That reads 2801.60, which I really, really hope isn't a financial number.

Other than that, care to guess? Because that's what I'm doing.

Update: Mystery mail image has been removed.  Why?  Because I got the answer, and our address is on it.  :)