Do something with the calendar in the task bar Linux

So, you have this Date/Time thing in the taskbar of Gnome and you'd like to see it do ... something more than simply display a calendar. Have you double-clicked on a date yet? Evolution pops up. You probably don't need it to be your mail client, but by default, it's the interface to show calendar information (whether a Date is bold or not) in that applet.

Certainly, you can use the built-in calendar, but Evolution allows you to use web calendars (such as Google Calendar) as well.

How simple is it?

If you're in Evolution, make sure you're in "Calendars" mode.
Right-click on the white box above the calendar and choose "New Calendar". Sure, you can use the Google link to do it, and it'll be easy to choose your calendars. But if you have the direct URL to a .ics file, change the "Type" to "On The Web". Give it a name, color, and paste the link in the URL box, but change http to webcal.

The following is the public .ics for the USA holiday calendar. Copy/paste it into the URL box.
webcal://www.google.com/calendar/ical/usa__en%40holiday.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

This is the phases of the moon:
webcal://www.google.com/calendar/ical/ht3jlfaac5lfd6263ulfh4tql8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

779 error installing KB957324

Repeated problems failing update of KB957324. Downloaded the Microsoft stand-alone installed, failed because: can't change or read c:\windows\system32\mapisvc.inf. Edited the permissions to take ownership of this file by the current admin logged in user. Retried. Successfully completed. Verified that SYSTEM still had full rights to the file. Happy camper.

vboxvmservice is great. It's also case sensitive with Oracle

http://sourceforge.net/projects/vboxvmservice/

ERROR: Could not find a registered machine named 'Random Name'
Details: code VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001), component VirtualBox, interface IVirtualBox, callee IUnknown
Context: "FindMachine(Bstr(VMNameOrUuid), machine.asOutParam())" at line 2027 of file VBoxManageInfo.cpp
Using custom VRDP-Port: 3390
Oracle VM VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.2.6
(C) 2005-2010 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.


This happened after I changed to Oracle from Sun.
I had to global search and replace Sun for Oracle in the VBoxVmService.ini as well as change my lazy lowercase only
VBOX_USER_HOME=c:\Documents and Settings\username\.VirtualBox to proper case.

Further testing proved it wasn't working as expected on reboot, even if it could work from command line. I'm not going to fight this, so I put the VBOX_USER_HOME info in the global environment variables and it worked quite nicely.

Find a delegate in Outlook from Active Directory

The problem occurs when one of the employees that was configured as a delegate (for example user A) has left the company. When user B sends a meeting request for the manager, user B will receive an NDR because user A no longer exists in Active Directory, but is still configured as a delegate for user B.

The answer is here.

Creating a Mission Statement

We had one of "those" meetings today, and I have to tell you, it was more productive than I thought it might be. We focused on a coherent vision and coherent, plausible, and not ostentatious mission statement. I based my viewpoint on the mission of the Starship Enterprise, and focused my input on this one question that I felt the mission statement must provide an answer to: "For any action X that we do, is it accomplishing the mission statement?" The Enterprise's original mission was to do *something*, but it doesn't define or limit the parameters of how the mission is to be accomplished. The mission statement is also not about a milestone or final goal, but rather how the journey of success will be measured.

In essence, clearly and concisely we created a statement that tells our group and others who we are, and what our ultimate goals for measuring the success of our accomplishments may be. That enabled us to make a reasonably generic statement of goal/mission (our mission is to do genericly good thing X in order to accomplish broad continuous goal Y). "Did what we accomplish today further our ability to accomplish broad continuous goal Y?" Your mileage may vary.

Also, try not to split your infinitives, if at all possible.

Got my 3D back on my Gateway

If you're in Ubuntu, and upgrade from Intrepid to Lucid, you might find this problem that I had: No 3D Effects with Intel 945 graphics. Apparently, that's because Lucid thoughtfully installs nvidia drivers, which, until removed, usurp 3D capabilities of other processors, such as Intel's. I removed a few things labelled nvidia and got 3d working again. Yay!

SSL Certs - It's about Identity, Not encryption

What I've recently learned that is TL:DR for me:
An SSL certificate is designed to provide identification, not [just] encryption. The point of the SSL Certificate is to inform the browser that the encryption being utilized is the one being offered at the server that you think you're visiting.

A CA/Certificate Authority is an entity that offers and digitally signs an SSL certificate. It is a third party that hopefully your browser trusts to confirms the certificate your web browser sees is the one that the CA issued.

Do you need to spend money to get an SSL certificate?
No: StartSSL.com can get you a real third-party verified SSL certificate.

If you can do that, why spend money?
Remember, an SSL certificate minimally provides identification that the SSL certificate that your browser sees is authorized by the CA for the domain name (and for the free certificate, an associated email address) that requested it. That type of information can be generally completed in an automated fashion. The next levels are generally "Verified" and "Extended Validation". Both of those require humans and time and vetting, so they might be more expensive. SSL is for identification, not [just] encryption. Higher levels of certification mean not only is the certificate pointing to the domain, but also that the domain really is the company that you want to connect to. See? Free SSL certificates are cheap. A phisher can create a look-a-like web site that has a real SSL certificate, connected to a almost-the-same domain name, and you could reasonably believe that you've entered your password -- securely -- on the correct domain.

What do you need for SSL?
If the minimum you need is a certificate for verifying that the encryption is valid for the site, maybe for your own email/Exchange Server, Cheap or even self-signed could possibly be adequate. If you're offering a secure service to the general public, you probably want to further ensure that they are connecting to the correct *COMPANY* as well as the correct domain, and therefore you'll want to go for higher levels of verification.