If you use SOTI's Pocket Controller Professional to control your Windows Mobile device from your desktop, you know that you can display the screen in a skin and control the virtual hardware buttons in PCP.  You can download skins from within PCP, but only during the first year of purchase.  They consider the skin catalog a "service."  After the year is up, you have to purchase the application again (at an upgrade price), which includes product upgrades for the year, too.  However, PCP hasn't even been updated in a year, so it seems a pretty cheap way to earn revenue, considering SOTI even solicits images from customers to add to the skin catalog.  (They used to provide the entire skin catalog free of charge.)

My work installation is beyond the one year of service, so I couldn't download a skin for my AT&T Tilt.  My home installation (separate license), however, was within the service year, so I downloaded the skin and copied it to my work installation.  I could not find anything in the program or on SOTI's site regarding copyright of the skin images, so I am posting the Tilt images (displayed half-size) for anyone who needs it.

The 32-bit version of Exchange 2007 cano be used in a non-production environment only.  As such, there is no need to license the product by entering a product key.  Doing so will only result in the error "Invalid product key".

A side effect of this limitation is that you can also not enter a product key for a valid 64-bit server from a 32-bit installation such as the management tools on a 32-bit OS.  I have a PowerShell script that configures a server, depending on the roles that are installed.  However, the first thing it does for all servers is apply the product key.  This fails because I am running my configuration script from a 32-bit management installation.

I consider this a bug.  The only solution is to run the Set-ExchangeServer command with the -ProductKey parameter on a 64-bit installation of the management tools.

MercyMe goes to a lot of places for touring, but they don't seem to hit Portland very often.  Two of the three times I have gone to see them has been in the metro area, with the other being up in Washington for a county fair.  Perhaps this is because Oregon, based on some metric, is the most unchurched state in the country.  I like to think that we may have fewer regular Sunday service attendees per capita, but that we make up for it by having a much higher percentage of those who actually have a personal relationship with Jesus.

This time, Jen and I will be traveling four hours and 270 miles to the booming metropolis of Central Point, where they will be performing with Casting Crowns on July 27.  The drive will be worth it since we have seats in Row 2 (!!), which will be the best seats we have ever had seeing them.

I look forward to seeing them since they are my favorite CCM band, along with Chris Tomlin.  And I look forward to Bart's new Hymned album, which he has already recorded and I assume will come out later this year.  If you are a poor, lost soul who hasn't had the opportunity to listen to MercyMe, go to their website to hear them, or visit their blog to see how even grown men can be childish at heart.

For the second time since I have owned it, the starter string on my Ryobi multi-attachment trimmer broke.  Must be poor design causing too much friction and slowing wearing down the nylon until it frays and breaks.

One of the difficult parts to remove, if you haven't done it before, is the clutch drum.  To do so, you need to remove spark plug and insert a screw driver into the combustion chamber to keep the piston from moving.  Then use a Torx 15 driver and insert it into the whole in the front of the drum.  Turn the driver counter-clockwise while holding the engine/chassis still to remove the screw holding the drum in place.

After you remove the springs holding the clutch together, loosen the clutch with a wrench and remove it.  Then you can remove the gray plastic cover that houses the starter string, pulley, and spring.  When you remove the pulley retaining parts, you can lift out the pulley.  You need to be careful when doing so because the spring will uncoil all over the place if you don't reign it in while lifting the pulley out.

I slowly let the spring uncoil so I can work with the pulley.  Now you can replace the broken string.  The frustrating part for me at this point was keeping the spring in place while trying to attache the pulley.  After several failed attempts, I figured out a better way.  I was trying to mount the pulley with the string wound around it, which means that the spring has to be uncoiled a bit.  But this leads to the spring not wanting to remain flat when the pulley is being mounted on the shaft.  The better thing to do is to unwind the the starter string so it is fully extended.  You can then wind the spring as tight as it will go around the pulley (less one or two revolutions).

Even though the spring has more potential energy at this point, there is enough friction between each revolution of the spring that it makes it less prone to want to jump off the pulley.  I found it much easier to mount the pulley when the spring is wound tighter around it.

I hope this trick will help you if you need to replace the starter string on your Ryobi trimmer.

The Faria ROM I have been using for awhile started having issues recently.  I was having to soft reset more often (sometimes a couple of times per day), and I couldn't turn on WiFi anymore.  Memory would start at about 21MB and slowly work its way down, though a lot of that is probably due to the applications installed.

So I figured it was time to either reflash with the Faria ROM or use another.  I settled on another, discussed here at XDA Developers.  This is a 6.1 ROM, which is nice because of some of the improvements, such as native threaded SMS.  I also have more memory after a reset: about 24MB versus 21MB with Faria.  Usage feels much snappier, too.  I thought that it might simply be because OMAPClock is included, but when I checked it I was still running at 180MHz.  So if it feels snappy now, I can't wait to try it at 252MHz, which is what I normally run at.