tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1 2006-12-13T18:15:55Z My personal blog about my family and topics that may be of interest only to myself. Movable Type 3.33 tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.223 2006-09-08T20:41:45Z 2006-12-13T18:15:55Z

A few weeks ago, we had a team dinner to celebrate the two-year anniversary of our current project (even though it just seems like 7 years). Being the sole member of the social events committee on our team of 12...

A few weeks ago, we had a team dinner to celebrate the two-year anniversary of our current project (even though it just seems like 7 years). Being the sole member of the social events committee on our team of 12 people, I had some added responsibilities that day - helping setup the restaurant space and taking our "decorations" over in advance. The weather report said 10% chance of rain that day, so I left my umbrella in the car, which was parked (for free!) 5 blocks away (you can see where this is going). It turns out that day was the 1 day out of 10 like it when it rained. I could see the rain clouds building from my desk on the 37th floor all afternoon, and by the time I was ready to leave, it was a steady rain. Most of the materials I was taking to the event were already in my car, so I just had to get myself and my 2 bags of stuff (for the event that were not yet in the car) to the restaurant without getting too drenched. I had visions of poking holes in a trashbag for my head and arms, but I just couldn't stand the thought of how that would look. I eventually decided on a deconstructed cardboard box, which I could hold over my head with one hand while I carried the bags in my other. That actually worked quite well. I was able to get 1 block closer to my car via the underground tunnels to the parking garage for the building. I then skittered across the street (yes, I jaywalked), box in-hand, over to the next parking garage. That left me 3 blocks of unprotected walking. The box held up admirably against the constant drizzle. The bottom of my pants and my shoes got wet, but nothing much else. I arrived at my car in better shape than I had feared. Now, with my umbrella, I was on easy street, in theory. I wasn't in Theory, though. I was in Houston on Smith street trying to find the restaurant. I found it (it was quite inconspicuous, actually) but refused to pay the $10 for valet parking (I didn't have the cash, anyway). Driving around some more, I found some parking along the street that would turn into free parking in one hour. I just had to find 6 quarters to pay the meter, which I found only after some serious rummaging in my car. Leaving my "rain box" behind, I grabbed my umbrella and an armful of stuff, and walked the block to the restaurant. This I repeated 5 times until I had all the materials in the restaurant (I only had one arm free, since I had to hold the umbrella, too). It was after the second trip that I couldn't get the umbrella to collapse upon entering the restaurant (yes, it was still drizzling). So I had the added pleasure of trying to secure the umbrella with the velcro strap outside the restaurant in the rain while holding a big box. By the third time doing that, I got pretty good at it. The event itself was fun. Part of what I brought in were objects that took the place of name cards that I put at random seats at our table. So as people arrived, they looked at the objects and tried to determine which one represented themselves (and tried to guess which ones represented corresponded to other people). This was actually a lot of fun, since our ideas of what objects would represent people were not always obvious or necessarily aligned with what they thought of themselves. Since there was an mostly unfamiliar senior executive joining us for the event, we went around the table introducing ourselves, and as part of that introduction explained why that particular object represented that person. In some cases, the person had no idea (or the wrong idea) why that object was used! For historical purposes, I'm listing the objects we used to represent each person and a short reason why. - Laura: to-do list - she is very organized and always has lists she is working from (in fact, she used the to-do this before the evening was over!) - Kim: miniature poker set - she and her husband have gone to Vegas to participate in poker tournaments - Kevin: wind-up chattering teeth - he is able to talk for a long time - Andrew: a inflatable hammer - he is called "the hammer" by some people in the group because of his tight adherence and enforcement of our processes - Phuong: a male racing figurine in a barbie dress - her second child (nit yet born at the time) was initially determined to be a boy, but later identified as a girl - Kamran: broken up Matchbox car - his son has totalled his family's car more than once - Rob: smiley face mouse pad - I'm always cheerful - Jerry: Truly Tasteless joke book - his sense of humor can be politically incorrect at times - Wayne: carpet remnant with a hole in it and a paper model of a server - he has a network server sitting in his hallway to cover up a hole in the carpet his son's dog chewed - Dirar: Chuck-E-Cheese place setting - he took his kids to Chuck-E-Cheese a lot - Susan: paper iPod - she is always listening to her iPod at work - John: WWF magazine - he was a wrestler in college - Tommy: fake bill from the restaurant - he was the senior executive who funded the event - Ed: regulation football - he played on the national champion Miami team in college - Shelby: small Astros helmet with a ring on top - she was proposed to during an Astros game (she accepted) tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.222 2006-08-06T16:22:49Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

As we re-applied to the Mothers Day Out program at my wife's church, we were asked to write a short biography about each of our daughters. This was the same assignment we had two years ago, so it's interesting to...

my wife's church, we were asked to write a short biography about each of our daughters. This was the same assignment we had two years ago, so it's interesting to compare the one from back than with the updated one. Donna wrote the following and submitted it to the school. Elena Elena is cheerful and easygoing. She usually wears a smile and seems to be quite empathetic. She likes to dance and loves to do multimedia art projects. For example, she recently designed a convincing 3D "superman" with shapes she cut and glued from scrap paper. Her superhero even has a cape made from toilet paper. Elena has a long attention span and will give anything a try. Amanda Amanda responds well to routine and often prefers her own company to that of other children. She slowly warns up to new activities and new people, but then can be very affectionate and loyal. Amanda has a great memory and likes to learn new poems and songs. She would like to read and write independently. A quick hug or tickle can really lift her mood.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.221 2006-07-27T15:55:54Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

My alarm clock didn't go off this morning, even though I set it correctly as far as I can tell. It's a new clock radio I got for Donna for her birthday, but she had very specific requiremtns for a...

My alarm clock didn't go off this morning, even though I set it correctly as far as I can tell. It's a new clock radio I got for Donna for her birthday, but she had very specific requiremtns for a clock radio that this one did not meet. So, I replaced my own aging clock (with lighted blue digits) with this one. I felt a little guilty about keeping it for myself, since it was a present I bought for Donna, but I justified this by saying that Donna didn't like my clock radio anyway, and the digits on this one are big enough that she can see them without her glasses from her side of the bed. So perhaps it was karma that prevented the alarm from going off at 5:00 AM this morning. As it was, I had just enough time to shower, get dressed, and leave to make my 7:00 AM meeting. I didn't even have breakfast. I never skip breakfast. At least I have a free lunch out today, so I can fill up then. tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.220 2006-07-26T03:14:44Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

I may be the only one that thinks this is cool, but I just have created a flash-based pie chart with Ming via PHP. Here it is in action: I did this to integrate with an intranet application I built...

Ming via PHP. Here it is in action: I did this to integrate with an intranet application I built at work, but mostly it was excuse to try to actually create a Flash animation with the tools I have at hand, which are pretty rudimentary. In fact, as a pie chart outside of this application, it's kind of strange. There's no way to tell what the slices represent without moving the mouse over them, and there's no title to the chart (the example above is the number of pictures on my website from each year). For my purposes, this is fine, since the intranet application supplies all this. But doing that was surprising difficult, mostly because I found little-to-no documentation about how to use Ming in PHP. There are some examples, but nothing very comprehensive. Not knowing how the Flash model works, I had a very hard time understanding the difference between a shape, display item, sprite, button, and so on, and when you can (or should) do what to which one. Even now, I haven't been able to figure out how to ensure each new slice's label appears on top instantly (if you look closely, in some cases it fades from the previous label).]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.219 2006-07-12T18:15:14Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

I'm always excited when some new technological technique or toy catches my attention. I've had a few in recent weeks (Lilypond and Blender), but the last few days, it's been creating flash objects on my website via the PHP Ming...

Lilypond and Blender), but the last few days, it's been creating flash objects on my website via the PHP Ming functions. If that sounds like a lot of techno-babble, well, it is. In simple terms, it's a way I can create drawings on my website that can be animated (or not), but are also vector-based, so they're resolution-independent. This originally caught my attention because someone at my wife's church wanted to know if I could help making a neat animated splash screen for their website. I said I couldn't because I didn't know how, nor have the tools, to create that type of graphics. But I realized I did have some ability to do that through PHP. That lead to some experimentation, but that didn't last long. I then worked on getting my little bar graph-creation program converted to Flash. That was fun. Then I thought that I could use this same technique to finally fix my the counter on my Macintosh page that I never got to work beyond 99 days. The trouble is that I want to overlay a perspective view of the counter on the image of the iMac's screen. Since the screen is tilted to the camera, it is not a perfect rectangle, so the text I put on it needs to be distorted to look right (perfect). I tried doing this with image slices, but these have to be rectangular, and it was laborious to pre-construct all possible digits to be placed on the screen. Perhaps if I could use the Ming flash tools, I could programatically distort some text and overlay it on top on the image. My first attempts were promising, but I quickly was stymied by the lack of detailed information on how these PHP Ming functions work. I experimented some, but came to the realization that there is no facility arbitrarily distort objects with PHP Ming. I can rotate them and skew them, but I can't distort them. So I'll have to try a different approach rather than the most robust one. I could create some digits that have the appropriate perspective already applied and then just place them on the image with PHP Ming, or maybe even the GD functions of PHP. I could ignore the perspective part of it, just skew the text, and hope it looks good enough. I'll think about it some before I start on my solution.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.218 2006-06-23T18:04:38Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

Well, it didn't nearly take me as long as I thought. My design of my pictures page is complete. I'm really pleased with the layout, and it definitely encourages me to keep it updated more frequently. This week, I have...

as long as I thought. My design of my pictures page is complete. I'm really pleased with the layout, and it definitely encourages me to keep it updated more frequently. This week, I have uploaded 109 pictures, including two picture collections: Florida Trip 2006 and Roden Reunion 2006. The pictures page now has three sections: a display of the latest 20 pictures added to the site, the most recent collection added along with an ability to select any other collection, and a calendar-like grid showing the number of pictures from each month and year available. These changes meant I had to update several other components, most notably the search page. I still have a few tweaks to make, but everything is functioning well.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.217 2006-06-19T17:59:15Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

I am really bad about uploading pictures to my website anymore. In the past, it has been because I have not been able to keep up with titling and putting comments on my photos in iPhoto, but at present I...

my website anymore. In the past, it has been because I have not been able to keep up with titling and putting comments on my photos in iPhoto, but at present I am essentially caught up with that. And yet I have not yet uploaded any to my website. I have recently determined that this is because of how my online pictures are organized. It's all based on "collections", which are basically sets of pictures that are uploaded together. This made sense when my pictures were not managed by a database, since the pictures would have to be presented in a static HTML index page. But I would rather be able to upload pictures one at a time and have them available quickly on my website. So I'm in the progress of changing my online picture presentation scheme to move away from collections. I'm thinking of transforming the collection idea into "keywords" and presenting the pictures primarily by date taken. This way, I can create a set of pictures with the same keyword (like "Glen Rose 2006") to be able to present them as a set, but also simply upload pictures with no keywords. Look for those changes, and some new pictures, within a month or so.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.216 2006-06-12T17:44:14Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

We had an eventful Sunday. After the normal Sunday morning activities (church and yardwork), we caught a 1:10 PM showing of the new Pixar movie Cars. It had gotten mixed reviews (stunning visuals, but hackneyed plot), but with a G...

1:10 PM showing of the new Pixar movie Cars. It had gotten mixed reviews (stunning visuals, but hackneyed plot), but with a G rating and the past Pixar films among my favorites, it was a good opportunity to take my daughters to the movies. They liked it, I think, although they were a little squirmy towards the end. I thought it was much better than some of the reviews it has received. It was visually breathtaking (the race scenes are spectacular), and the story was entertaining. We'll own the DVD shortly after it is released (just in time for the 2006 holiday season, I should think). After the movie, we stopped at Old Navy to get some light sweaters for the girls, and then to Toys R Us to buy a bicycle for Amanda. We had gotten a really nice girls bicycle from a friend, so we got helmets and training wheels on Saturday. The bicycle fit Elena better, so that became hers, and she loved zooming up and down the sidewalk on her bike. We got a slightly smaller one (already assembled) for Amanda. She picked out a My Little Pony bicycle. We then went to Sweet Tomatoes for a early dinner. It was just before 5:00 PM when we left the restaurant. The girls fell asleep on the short car ride home. I carried them in and let them continue their nap on the couch. But at 7:00 PM, an hour before their normal bed time, they were both still asleep! I gave them the carry test: if when I carry them to their beds and they continue to sleep, I consider them down for the night. That's just what happened to Elena - she got 13.5 hours of sleep last night. Amanda woke up twice (at 9:00 and 10:00) but both times not for very long. She got nearly 13 hours of sleep. Today, it appears that the pre-assembled bike was not assembled correctly, as the training wheels are too low, causing the back wheel to not touch the ground (we haven't yet decided if we'll ask for our $10 assembly fee back). I'll fix it when I get home from work, but I hope Donna was able to survive their enthusiasm for a bike ride (they were asking about it even before I left for work this morning). I suspect fixing Amanda's bike will be the first thing I do when I walk in the door.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.215 2006-06-05T17:26:37Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

We were at Glen Rose this past weekend for the biennial Roden family reunion. As we were leaving Big Rocks Park after having played and waded in the shallow water, a man with a camera asked if he could take...

biennial Roden family reunion. As we were leaving Big Rocks Park after having played and waded in the shallow water, a man with a camera asked if he could take Elena and my picture. We were scrambling on the rocks, and I was lifting her up onto a large one. I repeated the feat at his request. He took another picture of Elena climbing on the rocks as well. My "parental radar" never went off during this. Perhaps it was because the photographer asked me directly about taking pictures. Perhaps it was because he did look like he was taking pictures of the site rather than trolling for little kids. Whatever the reason, I felt fine letting him take a few Big Rocks shots of Elena. He then gave me a copy of his card, and he asked about setting up a blog, once I told him I'd link to his site from mine. I looked at the site, Texas Outside, and it looks pretty nice. I'm not sure what he'd use a blog for on that site, but I'll email him to see if I can help.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.213 2006-05-02T18:16:05Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

SketchUp is the neatest 3D-drawing application I've seen yet. It was so neat, in fact, that I looked into it about a year ago, but it was far too expensive for me to justify even putting it on my gift...

SketchUp is the neatest 3D-drawing application I've seen yet. It was so neat, in fact, that I looked into it about a year ago, but it was far too expensive for me to justify even putting it on my gift list. I instead turned to Blender, which is free and extremely powerful, but has a steep learning curve up which I have just begun to climb. But recently I found out that Google, who bought SketchUp last year, is releasing a free version. It is available to the PC now and promises a Mac version soon. I'm so psyched that I downloaded the time-restricted demo version of the full software so I can start playing with it now, instead of waiting for the Mac version. I want to design a 3D layout of my home, just for fun.]]> buy SketchUp in the first place, and two, why they would release it for free. At the time, the acquisition appeared to be just a random business move. Honestly, I didn't give it much thought. But I went to explore the free version (whose feature set is reduced from the professional version), and all of the examples and tutorials were about building the outline of a house. It went on to say how you can place these models in Google Earth to represent an actual structure at an actual location. Then it hit me. The free version will allow anyone with the interest (like me) to contribute to the fidelity of the Google Earth representation of the planet. It's a way to tap into willing volunteers to help reconstruct reality within the Google servers. Google had already created the building outlines for most metropolitan areas, but how in the world were they to get all the other 99.99% of the buildings on the planet reproduced? The elegance of this idea really impressed me. I know I'll be contributing to the virtual Google world once the free Mac version is available. Check out my house in a few weeks in Google Earth to see my handiwork.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.212 2006-04-27T00:28:57Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

Donna had a meeting she wanted to go to this afternoon, so I left work a little early to meet her there and do a "car swap" so that I could take the girls for the evening. I took them...

Chick-Fil-A for dinner. The dinner experience was OK, but neither Amanda nor Elena ate much. They were both wiggly (Amanda especially). In fact, I vetoed ice cream because they ate so little. Their wiggliness was harder for me to cope with because I had such a lousy day at work today. But it wasn't until when we went to the play area in Chick-Fil-A that I became really uncomfortable as a parent.]]> This batch of kids' parents apparently did not think it was necessary to be in the room with them while they played. This surprises me every time, since I always want to be in there to make sure my children behave themselves and are not accosted by other children. I should have been warned-off by the spilled orange juice on the bench as a walked in, presumably created by a non-supervised child who didn't feel like, and wasn't told, to clean it up. I would have cleaned it up myself, but it would have meant leaving the area to go get napkins, which I wasn't willing to do. So I just let it sit there until a child came up and took an interest in the small, orange puddle. She started blowing on it, making the puddle move about the bench, increasing its area of influence. I told her not to do that, and she stopped. I always am careful not to intervene with other parents' kids when they have not given me explicit authority to control them. So I sat quietly while a few kids started yelling "Daaaaa Daaaaaa!" at the top of their lungs. It was unpleasantly loud. As a few were watching me while they did this, I think they were seeing if I would say something to them. I didn't, but they stopped quickly enough. During the entire time I was there, the sole adult in a room of about 10 kids, there was one child who was playing pleasantly enough but had a balloon in his mouth. Sometimes he would stop to blow it up, then take it out and let it go. But most of the time it was sitting limply in his mouth while he ran around the play area. I never saw or knew who his parents were, but I guess they were not too worried about his dying by choking. He was alive when I left at any rate. But the most disturbing behavior of one of the parentless children was one little boy, who was four, very talkative, and asked everyone what their name was. At one point, I saw him sitting on the ground next to a boy about his same age (maybe younger) who was lying on his back. He started slapping the younger boy in the tummy, and when the younger boy protected his tummy, he would slap his chest. I did indeed tell him I didn't think hitting was a good idea. He perhaps paused a moment before moving on to punching and poking. This apparently did not elicit the response he was looking for, so he grabbed the little boy's wrist and squeezed as tightly as he could. That got a wail of pain out of the younger boy. At this, the father of the younger boy entered. He was not speaking English, so I did not know what he was saying, but he picked up the younger boy to comfort him. He then started talking to the four year old. At this point I decide they are brothers, which may explain the desire to cause injury to his younger sibling. By the older brother's reaction, though, I can tell he was not being disciplined. I suppose the father did not know the reason the younger brother was crying. He didn't ask me, previously the only adult in the room. I told my girls that we were leaving then. By the time they got on their shoes, the wrist-squeezing boy was back in the play area, outwardly being a friendly, sweet child. I knew otherwise, and left as promptly as possible. tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.211 2006-04-19T13:05:50Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

I got the munchies yesterday at work and went down to the convenience store in the basement of my building with a coworker of mine. As I was mulling over my options from the vast array of candy bars, Whatcamacallits...

Whatcamacallits caught my eye. But before I could say so, my co-worker said "When I was young, I used to love Whatchamacallits." I immediately started looking for something else. The fact that she said something about it motivated me not to get it, for fear of looking like I can't make my own decision. I ended up getting the Whatchmacallit, but I had to say something like "Actually, I am going to get the Whatchmacallit after all" to somehow excuse my selection.]]> The Wizard of Oz. Everyone who wanted to participate had to "audition", which for third graders was just basically answering a few questions and singing a bit. I remember the teacher giving us an example of how it would go. I don't recall all the questions, but one of them was "What is your favorite food?" And her example answer was "Hot Pizza". We all then waited in the hallway for our names to be called to have our audition. When my turn came, I was nervous. So when they asked me what my favorite food was, I answered "Hot Pizza," realizing even at the time that I enjoyed pizza, but I'm not sure it was my favorite. And I would not have added an adjective to my answer on my own. Maybe I was worried about getting the question wrong, so I just provided what I knew was an acceptable response. I could sing and memorize lines, so I got a part. I was cast as the Cowardly Lion. I was excited and had lots of fun practicing and performing. Several years later, though, I realized that my response to the food question might have made the auditioners think I would make a good Cowardly Lion. After all, it's pretty cowardly to not answer "what's your favorite food" with something genuine. So now I can feel myself rebelling against selecting the same food as someone else. I don't think I let that tendency sway my judgement anymore, but I can still feel that urge rumbling inside of me. Oh, wait - that's just my tummy. I must be hungry. I think I'll get some hot pizza.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.210 2006-04-18T18:28:58Z 2006-12-13T17:03:41Z

I am excited about a completely free program I recently found online called Lilypond, but when I try to explain it to people, somehow no one seems all that enthusiastic. Lilypond is a musical score creation program that takes text-based...

Lilypond, but when I try to explain it to people, somehow no one seems all that enthusiastic. Lilypond is a musical score creation program that takes text-based input. Looking at their website, you can see their focus is creating very precise scores that are not subject to the small annoyances that most computer-generated scores contain. The main reason why it's got me excited is that it creates a MIDI file along with the score, so I can listent to the notes I've input. As a non-musician, this is very valuable, since it's the only way I can check myself to see if I've entered the notes correctly. Since I discovered the program about two weeks ago, I've been entering all the songs we've invented throughout the years. These include "Amanda Jean", "Elena Reid", "I'm the Foxy Dog", "The Trash Song", and "Deery in the Cornfield". I'm right now working on trying to convert Richard's (my brother-in-law) composition "Wedding Waltz" that he created for his wedding. It is hand-written (but clear), so it will take me a while to create.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.209 2006-04-17T18:13:08Z 2006-12-13T17:03:40Z

We had a really full and fun Easter weekend. On Saturday, we took advantage of the not-yet-searingly-hot temperatures and went to the Hermann Park for a picnic lunch. It was windy, but very pleasant in the shade. Long entry follows......

Hermann Park for a picnic lunch. It was windy, but very pleasant in the shade. Long entry follows...]]> Starlings, and at least one male House Sparrow while eating our sandwiches. From there, we went to the pedal boats. Although the area in which the pedal boats are allowed was small, we still enjoyed seeing (and feeding) the ducks and fish. The fish were surprisingly aggressive to the bits of bread we would drop in the water, usually beating the Amercian Coots to the food. The wind was so string that when we stopped pedaling, we started moving with the wind almost right away and had to continually adjust our position if we wanted to stay in one area. After that, we walked over to the reflecting pool and then to the Japanese Garden, where we saw several families of adorbale ducklings. It was hard to believe those cuties came from the ugly Muscovy ducks (the ones with red bumps all around their face). We then walked over to the playground to let the girls have a brief stop at a more traditional play area. We didn't stay long, though, since we were all tired and hot. We rested on the way back along the pond to feed some pigeons with the remainder of our stale bread. We got some great looks at some pretty Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks. [I'm not particularly adept at identifying birds, but I found an easy way to use the internet to look these up. I found a page that lists the results of many backyard surveys in Texas. This lists the common birds around here. Assuming no rare species would appear in an urban Houston park, I could use this list to quickly identify the birds we saw. The one I needed help with was the female house sparrow. Donna actually pulled out a book to help me with this one.] We also went to a book store to try to get a book signed by Donna's favorite English professor, but the paper had the incorrect location. So instead we stopped at Marble Slab and had some ice cream. The next day, Easter, was just as busy. After a morning church service, we came home to get ready for our Easter dinner. Ray and Kathy came over, and we had a wonderful dinner of roast pork, peas, rolls, apple/beet slaw, and cake for dessert. But before the cake, we had an Easter egg hunt in the front yard. The girls had a fabulous time, squealing frequently as they discovered a new stash of eggs. As far as I can tell, we collected all but one egg, which I found later that day. I think all the excitement and sugar tired them out. Amanda crawled up onto Donna's lap around 3:30 PM and did not wake up until 5:30 AM the next morning - 14 hours later! Elena had some quiet time to herself around the house without her sister around, and she enjoyed that change of pace. She slept late today (until about 8:00 AM), so she got her rest, too.]]> tag:www.robreid.com,2006:/blog//1.208 2006-04-12T12:24:13Z 2006-12-13T17:03:40Z

I recently got converted to XP (from NT) at work. Included in that was a screenshot program that has a plug-in for use in all of the MS Office applications. So now every time I open a Word, Excel, or...

So then I have to click on the overlapping dialog box that says, essentially, "Hey - there's a dialog box under me!", before I can dispense with the original dialog box. What gets me is that someone had to put this into the operating system to have it behave this way. Someone thought this would be a good idea. I'm sure there's a good, logical reason why it behaves this way. Probably Excel reported back to Windows that the file didn't finish opening, so Windows wanted to tell me about it. I don't know why I'd need to know that, since I hope I would notice if the file opened or not. Maybe it's in case I forgot I tried to open it. I have to use Windows XP for my job. I get to use the Mac OS at home. Thank goodness.]]>