Tearing up the AAA Parking Lot

Workers were tearing up the AAA parking lot this morning.

No big significance. Just seemed like a bon mot. AAA = American Automobile Association. Building next to where I work. Lobbyists for many automotive related issues, often speaking out against using gas tax for anything other than highway construction.

Dell Docking Station Power (Non)Problem

This morning had trouble getting the docking station for my Dell Latitude 830 laptop (the docking station sports model number PR01X) to power up.

This was bad, because all of my USB monitors and keyboard and trackball and numeric keypad are driven through the docking station.

After thrashing - rebooting twice, etc. - realized there is a simply fix:

Unplug the docking station AT THE DOCKING STATION (not at the AC wall plug). And then replug. This causes the docking station lights to get all happy and green.

Why this should be, I do not know.

Excel file: URL hyperlinks cannot have parameters? :-(

Messing around with hyperlinks. Want to make it easioer to read a who;e slew of documents.

Tried to hyperlink to URL's of the form

file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/aglew/Desktop/Javascript%20Hacking/patent-links.html?patnum=1234567

These links work from Firefox. Works from Internet Explorer. (IE7)


But they don't work from Excel. Office 2007. Whether using the HYPERLINK functions in formulae, or the hyperlink cell type obtained from Insert / Hyperlink.

Excel does me the "favor" of stripping off everything after the ampersand.

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Gosh, I hate it when software does me favors like this.