Yearly Archives: 2005

Move (or rename) a mailbox’s system folders with WebDAV

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For some time, my Junk E-mail folder has been under the Journal folder.  I have no idea how I moved it there or when, especially since the Junk E-[M]ail Folder (JMF) is a system folder and thus can’t be renamed or moved through conventional means in Outlook and OWA.  I had tried several Outlook startup switches (like /resetfolders) to no avail.  I gave up long ago, but today a request came in from a user who somehow had done the same thing.  So I took another stab at finding a solution.

I happened to be messing around with WebDAV as a means of displaying a group schedule.  (Still haven’t found a way to do that.  If anyone knows of a way to create a shortcut directly to a group schedule item, which itself is a hidden appoinment item in a mailbox or public folder calendar, let me know.  An Outlook shortcut would be best, but I will take an OWA link, too.)

Long story short, you can use WebDAV to manipulate system folders with ease.  I use an excellent freeware tool called Mistaya to browse all WebDAV properties of any item/folder in Exchange.  Among the plethora of properties, the href property is the URL to the folder/item in question.  Take that URL and plug it into the Exchange SDK‘s “WebDAV Sample Application” Source URL field.  Paste it into the Destination URL field, too, but modify the URL so the location is where you want.  In my case, it meant change the relative URL from /Journal/Junk%20E-mail to just /Junk%20E-mail.  Then click the Move Resource button.  If successful, the status field will display code 201.

Determining movies that are appropriate for your children

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A coworker of mine and I were discussing today movies that are appropriate, and more importantly not appropriate, for our children.  He had referred me to a website before (Kids-in-mind) that reviews movies and applies a three-pronged rating to them.  Each prong represents a category: sex & nudity, violence & gore, and profanity.  It also gives scene-by-scene details of why a particular movie is receiving a given rating in a category.  This allows you, as the parent, to decide if a profanity rating of 4 is too high by reading what specifics led to the rating, rather than just arbitrarily restricting your child from any movie higher than a 3-4-2 (for example).  They review all new movies, not just ones targeted at children, so it is a good site for your teenagers, not just the toddlers that I currently have.

New CDs in response to Passion’s & Chris Tomlin’s Indescribable Tour

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The tour came to Salem for its penultimate stop on the Passion Conferences Six Steps Records tour.  It included music from Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, and a presentation by Louis Giglio.  Wow, Louis is an excellent speaker and his presentation was very awe inspiring.  After listening to Chris and Matt sing, and anyone who listens to CCM has no doubt heard songs written or sung by both of them, I had to get some CDs.  So I picked up Chris’ Arriving, Matt’s Blessed Be Your Name, and Passion’s How Great Is Our God.

I was expecting to enjoy Matt’s album more since I am more of a fan of his music versus Chris’, but I was surprised to “hear” how much I liked the album.  One of the reasons I got it is because it contains my favorite CCM song of all, How Great Is Our God.  The rest of the album is excellent, so I recommend it. 

I was not as impressed with Matt’s album, notably because it contains only live music.  I am a fan of studio recordings first, and then only live recordings if I like the song in the first place.  The album still has some really good songs, notably Blessed Be Your Name and Undignified, the latter which I could play over and over.  But I think I will have to get his albums that have studio recordings of these to really appreciate the songs. 

The same applies to the Passion CD; live music from the Passion ’05 tour.  It’s a good album if it has a bunch of songs you want all together on one CD, but otherwise I recommend picking up the individual artists’ CDs.

Taking Christmas lights to a whole new level

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My wife and friends say I go too far (though not quite Chevy Chase too far) simply because I have an inflatable penguin in my front yard, a couple lighted reindeer that always get, uh, “rearranged” by neighborhood teens every year, and lights around the house.  I think it’s the fact that they are connected individually to X10 that pushes me into geek territory.  But I am put to shame with this find, courtesy of YouTube.  It is a fuzzy home video of Deerfield Township, Ohio resident Carson Williams’ Christmas lights synchronized to “Wizards of Winter” by Trans-Siberian Orchestra:

Site outage because of my own carelessness

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I apologize for the site outage that occured the last couple of days.  I think it was caused when I was trying to test a site searching tool.  It involved registering DLLs and granting permissions, etc.  But somehwere along the way I broke the site.  And my attempts to fix it only made it worse.  After spending hours and hours trolling the Net via Google to try and fix it, I resorted to help from the source:  Microsoft.  It took a couple of hours, but we were able to track down the permissions that were incorrect.  So everything appears to be back online, but I think I will have to visit all the pages to be sure.

Debunking the urban legend of the Mensa Invitational

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Today, a coworker sent me an email purportedly containing the 2005 winners of the Mensa Invitational, sponsored by The Washington Post.  Being an email administrator, I despise chain letters (though I am a fan of Wired Magazine’s article that traces the history of the oldest email chain letter), joke emails, etc.  But this one did make me smile.  Researching its true origins, however, revealed that not only is this not from 2005, but it is practically urban legend worthy.  First, the text of the email:

The Mensa Invitational once again asked members to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year’s {2005} winners:

  1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with
  2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
  3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
  4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
  5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
  6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
  7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
  8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
  9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness
  10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
  11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
  12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
  13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
  14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
  15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
  16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
  17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
  18. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

If you Google any of the terms you will find lots and lots (and lots) of blogs that have posted this as if it were legitimate.  But you can’t find anything on washingtonpost.com.  Well, almost.  There is an archived page on the site for their Style Invitational, which is a weekly column in the Style/Living section.  The page is for Week 281 (08/02/98), but at the bottom it lists entries from Week 278 (07/12/98), containing the very words in question.  If you manually change the URL to use the July 12 date, you get a 404.  I even tried the Wayback Machine, but the Post site isn’t indexed.  So it looks like we’re stuck with only a fragment of the original post.

In any case, the email isn’t real, but the humor remains just as funny.  Thanks to pushback.com, who blogged about this over a year ago.