SilentRob

I use Azureus most often for recent stuff, but if you want something older, then eMule is the way to go. It's almost unfair putting them both in the same poll, since they have different uses for me.

I figured I'd go ahead and post samples of what I'm talking about. For those of you who know Publisher, but for some reason or another don't have access to it, I've included Adobe PDF versions as well. The names and addresses have been changed to protect the innocent. I think you get the idea: The body of the letter would start about a centimeter below the address information in ltr_primary.xxx, and after a page break (for longer letters), would immediately start on the ltr_secondary.xxx format, about a centimeter below the header... and do so for all pages afterward. I'll really appreciate whatever anyone can suggest. I have eFax, and it would be really nice to send out faxes on this template straight thru eFax online instead of printing it, using the fax machine, and just using eFax to receive replies. Again, thanks in advance! letterheads.rar

I have designed a rather nice letterhead set in Microsoft Publisher 2003 that I would like to be able to use as a template in Microsoft Word. It consists of a decorative front-page letterhead with logo, and a simple letterhead for all subsequent pages. My question for you folks here is this: How can I go about converting these two *.pub (ltr_primary.pub and ltr_secondary.pub) into templates that can be accessed from the "New... Templates >>" menu in MS Word? Preferably in such a way that the first page of the new document would use the primary letterhead, and all subsequent pages automatically use the secondary letterhead. It would sure be nice to have the letterhead ready to print letters on-the-fly instead of having to load my pre-printed letterheads into the printer before each piece of correspondence. I figured that since you guys have solved every computer problem I've had in the past, this should be a simple issue for you to help me with. Thanks in advance!

I've just bought a new 3.5" floppy drive, so I can transfer documents my Dad saves in Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS (apparently lots of people still use that version!) to my computer whenever there's a problem with his computer. It's just easier than having him exit out and send it to my computer over the network, and WPDOS doesn't recognize CDR/DVDR drives... besides those are too slow (lead-in/lead-out) for such small files. All in all, I still think that the floppy is the superior short-term storage method for small files, and it's pretty much universally compatible. Emailing files to myself was usually enough when I had to print term papers on the school printer, but every now and then, I'd get to school to find out that the school network was down, so I would ride back home to put it on a CD-R... that was a pain. I wish I had the wherewithall to put a FDD in my old computers when I was still there.

Okay I just bought a brand new floppy drive today, and had this exact problem... I exchanged the drive and the cable for different brands of each, and it still didn't work. Turned out I simply had the "Drive A" setting in CMOS set to "None" -- all I had to do was change it to the 3.5" 1.44 MB 2HD Floppy Drive setting, and voila, it worked! I hope that piece of advice helps... Also, for some reason, even though the red wire on the MB socket was aligned with those in the IDE sockets, I had to have it on the opposite side in the floppy drive socket (i.e. the red wire was on the board side rather than the door side of the drive instead of vice versa for the IDE drives) -- anyone know what's going on there?

What can I say... I'm a really cheap bastard. GetDataBack totally wasted my time by not mentioning that it was a trial version until *after* the 45 minute search process, and what's on the drive isn't really worth 80 bucks to me, so that's a no-go. EasyRecovery Pro is $100, so that's a no-go. The Windows Recovery Console doesn't recognize the I drive (the one that got fubarred), and running FixMBR on other disks gives me a message about possibly losing everything on those disks without recovering anything on the one I care about. The program PCI Fast Recovery on the boot Cd that was mentioned gives me some kind of division by zero error when it gets to the drive in question, so that's a no-go. Any other software suggestions? I'm gonna reformat the drive in a couple of days and just start from scratch if nobody has any freeloader-friendly ideas. Thanks all!

Those are neat suggestions... I also searched on Google (should have done that first, but you know....) and got a program called GetDataBack, which is currently about 30% finished recovering. I'll let you know how it works in about half an hour. Thanks

This one pretty much is my tertiary drive... running alone on the secondary UDMA133 channel. I have another 40 GB drive running as my primary drive, so I think I'm already doing what you suggest... thanks though.

Hi there... I just now have the most annoying problem, and it looks like about 40 GB of data that I used to have has disappeared into the void. I turned on my computer this morning and to my surprise, the new Maxtor 120 hard drive I installed on Tuesday, moved all of my large files to, and worked for two days straight did not show up in Windows Explorer, even though it was on the list of hard drives when the UltraDMA controller initialized in the boot. I opened the case, pushed in the cables a little tighter, started it up again, WinXP loaded, and this time, the drive shows up in Explorer, but the label has been reset to the original "Local Disk", and when I try to access it from Explorer, it complains that the drive is not formatted, and asks if I would like to format it. I really would like to get out of this without reformatting my drive and losing pretty much everything on my computer that I care about. I know that the data is still there because I haven't really done anything with the drive... I just need some tips on how to get it back! Thanks.

For music, I prefer Winamp3, but for vids, WiMP9 (i like vowels... and I thought "i" fit in nicely... forgive me if anyone else has used that quasi-joke before) is excellent for the most part. The only beef I have with it is that if any vids are unplayable (for bad CRC, no codec, or whatever), WiMP9 won't give a very clear reason (like the specific codec needed). However, with other utils like PAR and GSpot, CRC and codecs are found nicely. All-in-all, I just want a codec detector to be built into WiMP 10, and I'll be quite the happy camper.

Howzit goin? Something that's been bugging me about some video files (usually DVD rips) is that the volume is unacceptably low. Even with the player's, Windows' and my speakers' volume cranked up to full blast, the sound coming out is what I would expect with the software amps at half volume and my speakers barely on. I understand that it has something to do with the already low volume of the AC3 on DVDs... but some people don't amp the sound during the conversion to AVI/MPG, whatnot... So, my question is... is there a piece of software that will bump up the playback volume another few notches, without me having to extract, amplify, and reintegrate the sound? If not, I'll just use VirtualDub... just trying to not have to do that for 1/5 of the videos I watch. Thanks, SilentRob

Sorry for the long rant, but I've been hearing about this for months now, and have talked to people who bought a brand new telescope just for this... I'm hoping to save at least *somebody* some money. Every couple years, I hear the same Mars Opposition hype. Not that it's unearned. However, this year, telescope manufacturers and astro-stuff stores have been using this year's so-called "historical opposition" to hock a bunch of $100 plastic scopes and styrofoam Mars globes. For the laypeople, if there are any: Opposition - Earth is directly between the Sun and a certain planet. Perihelion - The closest point to the Sun in a planet's orbit. Perihelic Opposition - Earth is directly between the Sun and a planet while that planet is closest to the sun, meaning it's about as close to Earth as it gets. Disk Size - Apparent angle that the planet covers in the sky (the moon and sun cover about half a degree, or 1800" [" = arcseconds]) A.U. - Astronomical Unit - Avg distance b/t Earth and Sun (~150 million km or ~93 million miles) Fact: This year, Mars will indeed be closer to Earth than it has been in 73,000 years. Another fact: Mars gets within 7 percent as close during every perihelic opposition every 15 years... and the average schmo (including me) probably won't tell the difference thru their personal telescope. check out: Mars Opposition Table (William Sheehan, University of Arizona Press) -- scroll to the near bottom to see the "close-approach" opposition data. In fact, during perihelic oppositions, Mars is in northern autumn/southern spring... the time when the notorious multi-month-long global-wide dust storms cover the face of the planet. Even NASA probes (the ones that didn't crash... okay that was unfair) can barely see the surface. check out: Astronomy Picture of the Day (10 July 2003) - Dust Storm Over Northern Mars check out: Astronomy Picture of the Day: (27 July 2001) - Martian Dust Storm (during the last opposition) Bottom Line: I strongly recommend you check it out... just don't go buying $700 worth of astronomical equipment to see this without checking the current Mars weather (I'll get back to you all on a real-time monitoring webpage... if there is one). And if you check it out... don't do it because its only cool when close... check it out because it's cool *every* time! If you're in Southern Cali, go to Mt. Pinios off the I-5 near Gorman on the weekend before opposition (23, 24 August)... I'm sure there'll be at least 15 big-a** telescopes to look thru, and hundreds of people to answer your questions. Note to admins: I love your link buttons!

At first, I was overcome with rage by your reply to my question... half a second later, I was overcome with logic, and realized you were joking around. Net effect: no offense taken. Rob

note to self: avoid gamehead around the 7th of every month.

understood, done and done. Rob PS. Sorry gamehead, for the annoying post... kinda makes me no better than the folks I'm attempting to silence

Ever since installing my switch in lieu of the router (as we now have two IP's on one cable modem), I've been getting all sorts of SPAM thru Windows Messenger (I think)... I've been unsuccessful in creating rules that block Messenger Service SPAM, while allowing Windows Messenger to properly function with .NET sites. Here's an example of one of the problem messages claiming to present a solution: -------------------------------------------------------------- Titlebar: Messenger Service -------------------------------------------------------------- Message from Help to You on 8/7/2003 2:42:34 PM NEVER GET A MESSAGE LIKE THIS AGAIN! Had enough of these annoying Messenger pop-ups? The people at <company name deleted because they're jerks> have come up with an inexpensive solution! Make sure this is the last pop-up you ever receive. Join the thousands of people using and enjoying <product name deleted because its marketers are jerks> today. Visit: www.<domain name deleted because the owner is a jerk>.com ----- |OK| ----- ------------------------------Window End. This is getting quite annoying, as the only ads I get are promotions for ad-blocking software... basically everyone is telling me to pay them to stop bugging me. It's much like the crippled newspaper salesman outside the Goleta K-Mart... only I can't curse at these people and tell them to **** off... Well, I can, but they won't hear me Any help will be appreciated. Rob

Good question... A couple of weeks ago, I got a separate IP address on my cable modem so that my roommate and I wouldn't have to fight over ports and whatnot... so we had to take down the router (doesn't do multi-IPs) and replace it with a switch, which of course doesn't have a hardware firewall. I installed Kerio Personal Firewall (Download), and I'd say it's been pretty good so far. The only thing I dislike about it is that I had to set up all the individual passage rules, which the router did by itself nicely... but after a couple of days I hardly see any unexpected TCP/UDP requests . But seriously, like HandyBuddy said, you're gonna get a jillion opinions on this one. Good luck in your search, SilentRob

Capital idea! TMPEG works great, quickly and easily! Thanks, SilentRob

Grrr... Doom9 offers solutions that work excellently with my AVIs (MPEG4v2, DivX, XviD, whatnot), but still, they are of no avail with my MPEG-2 files... either I'm just drunk at 2AM, or VirtualDub isn't the right program for the job... I'm guessing both right now... get back to you sometime tomorrow on that one. Basically, the solutions provided for Direct Stream Copy work for AVI formats, since the codecs are natively recognized by VirtualDub. No MPEG-2 encoders are found by VD, and so I'm forced to save the AVI in Full Processing Mode (meaning hours upon hours of not being able to use the computer at all for anything else... love my Athlon 1.2!). So I guess I'm now wondering, are there any other programs that will do this kind of task for me, or am I stuck with converting the video outright? Thanks, SilentRob

I was wondering if any of you guys knew of software capable of cropping a short clip out of an SVCD-ready MPEG-2 movie. VirtualDub will allow me to open the file and crop out the scene, but not do a 'Direct Stream Copy' when trying to save the film. Therefore, I'm required to convert the file into MPEG-4 or some other VD-capable format... which is a very loooooong waste of time. Cropping works great on DivX/Xvid/MPEG-4 vids, as VirtualDub is made for them, but it won't have anything to do with my SVCDs and MPEG-2's... even though I've tried the so- called MPEG-2/AC3 version of VirtualDub. Obviously, I'm using the wrong software, or my codecs only DEcompress MPEG-2 files. So, where does one get the right software, or a proper codec compatible with VirtualDub? Thanks, SilentRob

Hmmmm... When all else fails, check to make sure that no programs are using it... duh this is what I get for asking q's at 2:30 AM I noticed this morning that sometimes Winamp3 stays open sometimes even after you "X" it out, especially if Windows is busy downloading through eMule, Agent, and mIRC simultaneously. So, I changed the associations of all video files back to WMP9 (never really liked Winamp video), and haven't been able to duplicate the problem. So, sorry for the false alarm, but thanks for all your help!

This solution works great for .avi files... haven't had one problem with deleting an AVI since Drew pointed this thread out to me. Unfortunately, I just tonite got a problem with a persistent .mpeg file that refuses to be deleted. Restarting the computer corrects the situation, but this happens often enough so that I could use a more all-around solution. Only happens with multimedia files... except avi since reading this thread. Thanks, SilentRob

Well, ain't that nice to know? In the 2 years I've had my Plextor, I've never had to call them. So, I'm thinking that support is not much of an issue. So, I'd probably follow your advice for the time being. But, if anyone has experience favoring Plex over Lite, plz be sure to post it!

I've been reading up on the latest hardware, and currently I'm looking at CD-RW's. I've had nothing but good luck with my Plextor 12x10x32, but I always need it harder, better, faster, and cooler. So, I've narrowed down my likely selections to the Plextor 48x24x48x and Lite-On's 52x24x52x. I've heard that Lite-On's drive has faster performance at a much cheaper price. On the other hand, reliability is a much more important factor for me, and I'm not sure how much I want to save 45 seconds on each burn if I'm gonna end up burning 2 coasters each week... kinda defeats the purpose. BTW... the $40 price difference would be well worth it if Plextor's reliability is much better than Lite-On's. Also, I will have a separate CD-ROM drive (probably the Afreey 56x) for DAE and direct copying... so read-speed is also not important. So, in the end, I just want to know what you think: Is the Lite-On 52x24x52x reliable, or is it worth the extra cash to get the Plextor?

Sweet board... probably gonna end up getting the LAN/Sound model. I see it has integrated 6-channel sound... I suppose they mean 5.1?