Married Four Times - Humor

After all that web development stuff with Dice (There's another article I have planned for Monday), I needed something a little lighter.

Velma sent me this joke Email to share with you. Consider it the "Velma Mark of Quality for Humor"!

Married Four Times

The local news station was interviewing an 80-year-old lady because she had just gotten married for the fourth time. The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 80, and then about her new husband's occupation. "He's a funeral director," she answered.
"Interesting," the newsman thought.

He then asked her if she wouldn't mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living. She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years.

After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she had first married a banker when she was in her early 20's, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40's, and a preacher when in her 60's, and now in her 80's, a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.

She smiled and explained, "I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go."


(Oh, just hush-up and laugh).

Dice.com Redesign - Getting Better

On April Fools day, Dice.com showed the world their then latest search page redesign.  I didn't like it.  At all.  You can read about all of the changes here.  In the intervening week, someone, actually two people in Urbandale, Iowa hit my blog and read the article.  There were more hits in the last few days.  So I know that Dice is listening and for the most part agreed for now.  After all this is whining I am doing considered "real" work.  It's called "User Interface/User Experience" and that's going on my resume since this is the third time that I've had an effect on a website because of a blog article I wrote.

Not tooting my own horn, but hey if you've got it, flaunt it, right?

The picture that you see here is the result of an advanced search on Dice.com this morning.   I logged into Dice.com with my email address, clicked the advanced search link, went to the boxes and typed the following:

Keywords:  Project Manager
Location Options Zip Code: 33301 (for Wilton Manors, Florida) and Include Jobs within: 20 miles.

I really don't want to spend my life on I-95 behind the wheel of my Jeep cursing at someone with a 10 year old Camry driving 45 mph in the fast lane with a Haiti sticker on the back. Been there, done that, started taking the back roads as a result like all the locals and found I can get to Pompano Beach faster on Powerline than on the interstate....

Exclude:  Entire Job Detail the word "Sales"

(If I were a salesman I wouldn't be doing this at almost 8AM)

Job posted was 2 days
Results Displayed: 50

Two comments so far...
1) this could be because of Firefox or that I'm not awake but the Zip Code Field did not clear when I typed the first 3 in it.

2) Results Displayed.   I'm in a Major Metropolitan Area.  I want either "1000" or "all".  My results on this search should be around 500 jobs.  It was in the other search that I did... on the other hand it only returned 32 jobs.

Ok, so what did I do wrong?  I know that in this area there are more people looking to hire now than there were six months ago.  Went back into the advanced search and removed from the "Exclude" box the word "Sales" and amazingly I got 3644 positions... Hmmmmm Not Quite Right.

After playing around it turns out that it was the zip code and distance that was holding me back.  Going from 3644 jobs to 15 was ... jarring.  This is all a part of getting the search "just right", and takes some time to finesse the website and the data so it's "Perfect".   It may actually be completely correct since I tend to aggregate my Project Manager search with other things that are similar.  My Mileage Did Vary.

Assuming that I want to look for every position that Dice knows about for Project Manager in the US, excluding "sales" anywhere in the body, it goes down to 3080 positions.   Clearly I have work to refine this query.  I have no problem with this ... or do I.

I still want my "All" but realistically since I do this every day, I don't want to look at 3080 positions.  My biggest Dice Search today yielded the picture you see above.  Ok, so it's from yesterday afternoon, but it does have 491 positions.

The point I am making is that I should be able to save the search as is and as a link, and have it remain.   I can do both, but if I do by the web page, I have to save each page as a link.   With 491 positions, I will have to save 10 pages plus 1 for "growth".  That is how I work Careerbuilder - I couldn't figure out how to break that one up properly using an "All".   The time for "All" is when you are happy with the breadth of your result and want to save your search.  I just drag the link into my bookmarks for "Open All In Tabs" and have all my searches open up semi-automatically.

Leaving "All" alone for now, there's a problem that I spotted with the search results.  This is why I said it's "Getting Better", you can't re-sort everything on the page.   While I can sort by Location or Date, I should be able to further break down the search by saying "everything in Fort Lauderdale".  That will exclude the neighboring cities of Wilton Manors or Oakland Park, but this would be a "Special Search".  I guess it isn't a major problem since I can specify it in the Advanced Search instead of a zip code.  The point is that it seems missing - more of an annoyance than a must have.

I still want my "All" though... or "1000".

The nice thing is that Dice does put this long string in your Address Bar that you can save.   Most websites that use Ajax technologies (Don't worry I won't geek out on you here non technical readers) wipe out the URL web address and replace it with that of the home page.  Here it would be http://www.dice.com and you'd be forced to use the RSS reader to do what I'm doing.  Not a good idea since the RSS readers are meant to be simple, and I haven't found an easy way to configure that whole kettle of fish.

Make mine with chips and a side of Guinness please.

So for now, and for the last couple years, Dice has been easy to use that way... and I hit it within my 160 pages that I load daily and 320 on the weekend.

For now, I won't give instructions on how to reconfigure (or hack) the resulting URL.  I think that with what you have here, you can get your results configured how you like.   Even configured how *I* Like, and I'll admit I'm a demanding user.

On the other hand there are some issues with how the display of the data is done, and this posting has gone on for 1038 words.   Check back Monday for more.

Catfish Vinho d'alhos - Recipe

Back in the 90s I made it to Provincetown. 

There, on Commercial Street, in the center of town is a restaurant where the Townies go.   The Mayflower Restaurant, a somewhat nondescript place, was a restaurant that would have fit in any other small town anywhere else in small town America. 

I've been in VFWs that served as the town meeting place and restaurant in Iowa and other places and they all looked fairly similar.  Rows of tables, old paneling that somehow looked "Classic" instead of merely "old", a noisy kitchen you could see into if you were positioned Just So, and a waitstaff that knew just what you wanted if you were smart enough to listen and let them actually serve you.

If you ever make it to the Cape, go there.   I have heard that they don't have this dish on the menu any more because only the Townies would get it.  It's a shame for us out of towners because this particular recipe is why I fell in love with Catfish.

This isn't "exactly" the recipe, this is one I found when I searched for The Recipe.  Somewhere buried in the cookbooks here is a large print copy of that original recipe.  It was told to me by the waiter there that first visit that I found they took it off the menu but "We'll bring a plate just for you".   We memorized the recipe by walking down the street chanting the ingredients, stormed into the guest house, and demanded paper and pen to write it down.   I got back home and typed it into a document that is long lost...

But today I made this recipe.  It may not be The Recipe, but it was very close and left me thinking, if it would make a mild fish like Catfish taste special, it would work on many other meats and tofu as well.  

Yes, Vegan Catfish.  What a concept.

Anyway, here is the deal, today I made the fish by marinading it overnight in the mix, then pan frying it.   I cooked two filets (to perfection, I might add), by dredging it through some flour and "Italian Seasoning" in a 3 to 1 mixture.  I used no oil, cooked the fish in a non stick skillet on medium heat with a single pat of butter until the filet flaked. 

If you want to try, this recipe originally came from the Provincetown Portuguese cookbook.  Thank you Joyce Perry Strong for sharing it with them and me.  You made my lunch memorable...

This recipe works for 12 filets.  I cut it down by 1/2 to 6 filets or 2 pounds of fish.  Just reduce everything by 1/2.... I made mine today after marinading it for 12 hours and not two days.  I also used a ziploc bag to marinade in since it made life easier to store and stir.

1-16 oz. bottle of cider vinegar
1 cup pickling spices
1 clove garlic, sliced
2 tbsp. onion powder
1 cup water
2 tbsp. saffron or turmeric
4 lbs. catfish, skinned, filleted and cut into pieces
Flour
Vegetable oil for frying the fish

Mix all the vinegar, pickling spices, garlic, onion powder, water and saffron in a bowl and add the fish. Refrigerate, stirring once a day for at least two days so the fish will marinate evenly. Remove from the bowl and drain on paper towels to remove any spices left on the fish. Toss each piece of fish in flour and deep fry in 2 cups of oil until golden brown on each side. Drain.

Serves 12.

Why Cricket in Florida?

Moving from one area to another and settling in can give you time to consider your surroundings and be confused. 

I woke today, early, and realized that I had not written a posting for today so I went to Google Insight.  It's the theory that if other people are interested in something, I may be too.  You know, the Herd Mentality.  The Justin Bieber phenomenon.

It tells you what was searched in a given area for a given period of time.  It gives me the top ten, although I seem to remember that I could go back and search for more than just that.  I can look at the major metro areas in many countries, and see what they were thinking.  Great for solving writers' block but I'm still a bit confused about any other practical use.

So here I sit, at dawn, windows open listening to some Goa-Psy Trance and wonder...

Why Cricket?

I have read the Wikipedia page on the rules to the game and for all I can see its a bunch of grown men running back and forth between two sets of pegs in the ground after hitting a ball with a frat paddle.

Every time I start to read that article, my eyes glaze over and think... I've got to ask a Brit Ex-Pat next time I speak to one.  It's a game that is played in "Commonwealth Nations" and is apparently the "National Sport of Great Britain".

It still looks like a bunch of guys running around between sets of pegs to me but what ever floats your boat...

But why in Florida?

We had a Cricket club in Philadelphia near the house.  It just looked like a big open field to me when I'd walk the dog by.  Nobody ever used it at that particular time of day and I just scratched my head and thought that it's better than plopping houses down on the grounds.  It had been there for longer than I was, and it was still there.   I had this feeling that it was the descendant of a club that was four or five times removed from pre-revolutionary times.  It was Philadelphia after all.

But here in South Florida, you would be hard pressed to find anything that predates 1900 let alone 1776.  Almost everything here is "new" in comparison.  Homes and businesses are typically low slung to avoid the high winds out of the occasional tropical storm and there is a "look" to everything.  Strip Malls and Fake Spanish Architecture with some Old Florida Concrete Block Homes with some vulgar gated communities full of Mc Mansions.  Add in a lot of Royal Palms and Ficus Hedges.  Want a better view? I suggest street view in Google Maps...

People flooded in after the invention of air conditioning made it possible to live in comparative comfort and luxury.  Like any inflow of people, it would reflect those who live nearest.  The Cubans flooded in to Miami in the 60s due to the overthrow of Battista's regime and there were waves of people from places like Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Barbados as well.  Adds an Island Flavour to the area.

They did bring their own traditions with them, and I can get a wonderful Cuban meal just by walking a mile up the road.  Yes, I walk,  I'm from Philadelphia and we *do* that.

We are close enough to those places that when I get in the car and am listening to AM radio, I will stop for a while on "Zed N S" or ZNS Bahamas Radio Northern Service on 810 and see what the neighbors are doing.  Often during the news I'll hear about a little old lady in Eleuthera who had an accident with a palm tree or their sport scores.

That would explain it, the Bahamians as well as the rest of those Caribbean Nationals who settled here brought their fondness for that intractable game, Cricket. 

I still don't get the game, but it does explain why there were searches at all.

Then again, The Superbowl is just an excuse for me to overeat, Baseball is deadly dull, and don't even get me started on Soccer!

My Border Collie Stroke Update

I get a lot of people hitting my blog for information on Border Collies.  Lately, the series on where my Border Collie, Lettie had her stroke has been getting many steady hits.  I thought it would be best to update.  

It has been a month.  My 10 year old Border Collie had a stroke.  I woke up and she was wobbling around worse than some of the drunks that go to the bar near the house.

She was actually hiding behind the table that morning because she had lost what ever was in her stomach after sleeping all night, peed on the floor and was ashamed.  This is from a dog that hasn't peed on the floor since I got her.

Fast forward to today.

Dogs can have strokes, and mine had her second.  She also recovered from it almost completely.  I say almost because while I don't see any obvious symptoms, I notice differences in her personality.

Subtle differences, but differences all the same.

She is after all 10 years old.  She was spry before the episode, and she is now slower, more relaxed.  She's also more intensely sniffing around when I have her out on a walk.  For years she'd go out, walk on a route, and sniff almost everything but we had a rhythm of a mental three count and then move on.

It is possible that while she was sickest, I would have allowed her to sniff more, and I got into a habit of allowing it to happen. 

One other thing that I have noticed is that she's slower when walking.  We have a mile route laid out and she knows it well.   She's now walking so that it is more of a stroll.  Anyone who has had the luck of having a Border Collie in their life will know that they do everything with energy.  Now she's acting older.  We are all getting older, so I have to just deal with that.

She's also less stable on the floors in the house.  Not the floors in the picture, that is 1200 miles away on the third floor of my old house in Philadelphia.  The floors here are "Florida Tile".  Ceramic tiles with brown grout between them.  They are all the sudden, very slick to my dog's feet.   She has been sliding out for lack of traction when she runs across the floor.

Today she decided that at 4pm, we were going to play.   First she grabbed one of the many tennis balls that are around the house, walked over to my left foot and dropped it on it.  After going over to the corner that the ball had rolled to she walked back over and dropped it on the other foot.   I got the picture and bounced it a few times.  She looked like her old self, excited and smiling.  Making a grab for the ball I bounced it past her so she could run to the back of the house.  The problem is that the body has more horsepower than she expected and she ended up like Bambi with all four legs sprawling out under her body.  She did that to stop herself from sliding off the one step into the Florida room.

So for the most part she is more mellow than she was a month before.   She's taking her time on her one mile walks, three times a day and taking different routes especially in the early morning.  She doesn't seem to want to walk as far any more, and in the morning that can be quite a short walk.

But they are her walks, so I have let her pick the route for that one.   After all, I'm half asleep in the morning too.

For the most part she has been acting more and more normal as time goes on.   You wouldn't notice the difference, but I do.  So do some of the neighbors, but it is going back to normal and not getting worse.

Every day with Lettie has been a gift since I got her back around Thanksgiving 2002.  She's now in what I call her Bonus Time.  This was her second stroke, so it isn't too far fetched to say that it is her third life.  She's still cantankerous when she's disturbed or "petted wrong" so there's still fight left in the old girl.

As long as she's still fighting, I'll fight for her.

If you're interested in reading, you can search for "My Border Collie" here in the search box.  You'll get all those stories from a month back when I wasn't sure how much longer she'd last.  The stories are also referred to here.

For now, she's going to last a bit longer.

Predawn Gecko - Picture

No, you're not looking at Godzilla.
No, you're not looking at an upside down Gator.

You are looking at a critter that fascinates me.

Yes, the gecko.

They're shy little things that we tend to see in odd places here.  The ones in the daytime are Anoles, not geckos, but for me, they're really the same thing since they tend to be in the same places.  Upside down on the ceilings or glued to my calf because I scared it, they are common here.  Anoles in the day, Geckos at night to this casual observer.

One morning, very early, I heard a noise outside.  Walking to the front door, I stepped out onto the front porch, looked up at the light, and there was this little critter trying not to be seen.   I went back into the house quietly, grabbed my camera, and got this picture.

My best guess is that this is a "Common House Gecko" which is not actually a native to South Florida, but introduced from other warm climate areas.  Since they need warm climates, I'm amused by the story I have heard about Geckos in New York.  The story goes that in order to control cockroaches in high rise condos and apartment buildings, people have set these Geckos out into them.  The Geckos hunt the cockroaches and keep things down to a dull roar.

Their eggs are a common sight in my shed.  They're the size of a Pie Weight, and since the shed is shelter and warmer than outside, the incubation is a safe place for them.

I just have to remember that these critters are out in my shed when I go to grab the tools to do some work around the property.  I've had Geckos and Anoles both drop from the rafters onto me with a start.

The other place I have to watch for them is in the Jeep.  My Jeep is a 2002, so the roof on it is starting to get old.  The threads that hold it together have begun to degrade due to the UV light here, and there's one seam that has popped open.  You would not notice it, but the Geckos have.

Yes, I have a Gecko RV.  A Caravan for Geckos.  I've even spotted the little guys while driving.  I guess they figured that the sand filled Gecko that I keep on the dash of the Jeep to hold things down was a sign that they could consider it safe.

At least for now, little guys... at least for now.

A Snake In The Hedge - Picture

Yes, a Snake in the Hedge.

Not in the grass.

I've heard of the whole "snake in the grass" thing before.  It's an idiom in the US for someone who is sneaky or prone to doing things that are underhanded.

(Yes, I get readers outside of the United States... Hi Folks!)

Mind you, in the years living in New Jersey, Philadelphia and the "Philadelphia Suburbs", as well as all those trips I have taken through the Pine Barrens of South Jersey and hikes through Penn's Woods via the parks, I have only seen a small handful of snakes.  I can think of three specific incidents, one rattlesnake and two garter snakes.

Since I have moved to Florida, almost five years ago, I have matched that.  One day I saw one laying in front of my front garden digesting it's dinner.   By seeing it, it saw me and threw up it's dinner and ran away.

Yes, I am the man who made a snake barf.

The second one was inside the Florida Room inside the house.  I opened the back door and it raced away.

This one is the third snake.  It was actually inside of a Ficus Benjamina Hedge around the block from my home.  I was somewhat shocked thinking that snakes didn't readily climb trees, but here was this three foot long charcoal grey beauty sunning itself in the afternoon as if it owned the space.

These are what I have been led to believe are Black Racers.  They're known to be shy, more afraid of you than you of it.  They may give you a nasty bite but are not venomous.  On the other hand, I don't care to have them inside the house.  I'm just glad I got it out before the dog saw it.  She doesn't like "Critters" inside either and is more prone to do something about it.

The reality is that I have seen quite a few of these snakes, so I am counting "encounters" instead of merely seeing them.  Living in Florida means living in close proximity to wildlife.  Some are what people jokingly call "Charismatic Megafauna" - things like Manatees and Dolphins that are big and friendly and people actually like.   To have a healthy ecosystem, you have to make room for your friends as well as those who you'd prefer to keep a healthy distance from. 

In my case, like this snake.  It's fine as long as it stays in that hedge.  I'd prefer not to scare the dinner out of it either.

Or have it scare the dinner out of me.

Dice.com - Was your redesign an April Fools Joke?

Boy do I hope so.  Yes, a rant on someone's design of a web page.  I hope to find out that tomorrow (the day of posting for this) the changes have gone back to the old "condensed" view.... it wasn't.

When ever you change a web page, you will annoy someone.  In this case www.dice.com annoyed me.

Don't get me wrong, Dice.com is a great service for job searches if you are looking for technology, but this last redesign says to me that they are not looking at the actual "useability" of their data.  After all, the site really is just producing a database or a spreadsheet for you to read.

There's a simple solution, the old format was much more useable.  This one was obviously written for people of restricted vision since everything is BIG.

In the course of every morning, my ritual is once I settle in, I look at 160 web pages.  The vast majority of those pages are on one of five different job search webpages.  www.Dice.com, www.Monster.com, www.careerbuilder.com, www.indeed.com, and www.simplyjobs.com are the five that I hit the most, but there are others.  It takes me a minimum of three hours to go through all of this, every single day.  Weekends I have an added 160 pages to go through of very tailored searches of many cities, companies, the state and more.

Anything that slows me down is not allowed.  I take the page that I am looking at, break it up so that it can be bulk loaded into tabs, and split all of the web pages into five sets each for the Daily search, and the Weekly search.

I tried using the RSS Feeds for simplification but for the vast amount of what I am doing, they're just not showing enough data.  They cut off, for example on the view above, somewhere in the "I" positions.  I need the rest, so I have to do it through the web interface.

This morning, after experiencing at least five April Fools Jokes on websites that wanted to waste my time with things like games to place an order, or blinky things where normally data would reside, I finally hit the view above.   That was my first Dice page.  Notice that there are 414 results.  Not all of them are pertinent, however I allow for a little extra "slop" so I can include those that may not be strictly within my field.

My field is Project Management, but that should be taken broadly.  I have six years experience developing web sites under three different disciplines, Joomla, ASP Classic, and Google Sites.  To make a long story short, I can spot a badly designed website in an instant.   This redesign left me with the opinion that their team of developers and especially the person who approved the change should be forced to "eat their own dog food" by being unemployed and have to look for work in a large geographic area.

I'd suggest Siberia but that would be cruel.  To the Siberians that is, its tough enough to live in that climate than having these new people bumping around.

414 results.  The old design would have in a line columns for each individual job advertisement, and you could sort on the columns.  Very easy to skim over those 414 jobs and place them in just the order you found the best.  The link that I had to load this page, early in the first set of five for the daily job search, is very long with many parameters that specify where I am, how far away, companies to exclude, job titles to exclude and so forth to make this an automatic process.  Now, the sort is gone, the summary/detail link does not work, and it's broken on Firefox and Internet Explorer on three different PCs here in the house.

I was confronted with this ... slop before I had my second mug of coffee and said some very rude things.  I decided to think about it and am writing this late in the afternoon... why?

Take a good look at that picture.  You will notice that there are exactly four positions on that page.  When I paged downward, the inflated font and the layout allowed me all of eight positions to decide on.

Eight.  Out of 414.  Are you kidding me?

Now, a large font could be excused.  I can make it larger or smaller to fit my needs by doing a ctrl and + or - (minus sign) in Firefox.  It's easy to get around that.  The problem next is that they decided to slam all of the data into one column.   Now, not only can you not sort it easily by loading it all into Excel (Yes, I am also a Data Analyst), but they took away all the handy little sorts.  You can sort by date which is useless for my purposes - I only care if the job was posted since the last time I looked, or something nebulous called "Relevance".

I have never used "Relevance" since it has no bearing on what I am doing... yes, Relevance is Irrelevant.  In fact it's also pretty much irrelevant on any website I've ever seen it including leading eCommerce websites but that's a different story.

After clicking on the sorts and trying to change it to make it more useful by going from "Summary View" to "Detail View" and getting absolutely no difference... I gave up.  I was beat.

Now, Dice which was one of the more friendly to view and search for large metropolitan areas with many positions open, has become a burden of sloth.  I have enough searches in Dice that the morning Job Search now takes an hour longer.

So here are my suggestions, and they are simple:

1) Reverse the changes.
2) Fire everyone who approved this slop.
3) Don't do it again.
4) OK, I'll say it... hire me, for a lot of money preferably ... I can telecommute from South Florida and tell you when you're making a mistake.   In fact... that is just what I have done, for free.

Lipstick In School - Humor

Yes, It is April Fools Day... Be careful out there.  I look at April Fool's Day as amateur night, so instead of my playing a prank or a joke, I'll let Velma from Philly tell a story.

Enjoy!



Lipstick in School (priceless)


According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips on the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done.

She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine all the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.


There are teachers . . . and then there are educators.

The Pleasures of Upgrading A New PC - Genuine Lenovo Battery Not Attached

This is the kind of post that I do from time to time that sticks around.  I have a couple "Helpful Hints" (you can search that) that get read every day by a couple folks.   This particular one is how to remove an annoyance from the Thinkpad when Windows is installed.   If you are following along on how to do a "Bare Bones Install" of operating system and mostly open source software, hop onto this link after you read my rant below.


To whoever is in marketing at Lenovo that made this decision, I hope you end up working as a fry cook in a low end burger joint because you truly have no clue how to market to your customers.

After going through all the steps of installing software, I had been constantly annoyed by a pop up... but I am getting ahead of myself here.

The laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad T60.  I installed Windows 7 64 Bit onto it, and all the Lenovo software and drivers.  I also installed a laundry list of software onto it that you can see by doing a search back for anything with the tag "Implementation".

Since this is a laptop, it gets plugged into the wall from time to time or the plug gets kicked out when I'm half awake at 6am trying to get the dog out.

Here is my complaint.   When ever the power state changes from plugged to unplugged and vice versa, I get a rude message that begins with "Genuine Lenovo Battery Not Attached".

I 

Don't

Care.

The person who upgraded the battery in this machine made the choice for me, repaired it for me, and was kind enough to give it to me complete.  It works.  The battery works.  The battery holds a charge and will power the laptop for an acceptable length of time.

So who are you, my dear friend, the Marketing Drone at Lenovo to question the wisdom of the market by putting this 6 or 7 line bubble up on my desktop and hold it there longer than I would prefer questioning my sanity with "Genuine Lenovo Battery Not Attached"?

Now I went out and found out how to turn that rude message off.   There should be a check in the message to allow me to dismiss it forever, but no, you in your infinite lack of wisdom deigned that from on high I should have to see this blather until I get annoyed enough to try all sorts of things.

Including search on the web on how to turn that hateful message off.

I found it and will share it.

First, with Windows up and running, mouse down to the task bar.

Find the Power Management icon that resides next to the Wifi Icon on the right of your task bar.

Right click on Power Management (The Battery Icon) and click on "Launch Power Manager".

When the window comes up, click on "Options" tab.

There is a check box next to "Show Power Manager Gauge in Task Bar" - clear that box, then click on "Apply".

You will now not have the battery in the task bar from Lenovo but SURPRISE! under Windows 7 you will still have the battery information reported from Windows itself.  If you right click on the Windows battery, you can get to the Power Manager by selecting it there.

There.  Message Banished.  Now lets find that Marketing Drone and tell him just what we think of him.

Stupid.

What would this blog be without a rant, now and again, I ask you?!?!?