That was easy!

So this [oldish] computer stopped booting properly about six months ago. It would start, but then mysteriously die during the sequence. I finally had a bit of time to check it out tonight, so I powered it up and noticed the POST would not only show a garbled version of "Maxtor" (and the model number), but also identify this 40 GB disk as about 8 GB. At this point, it would refuse to even boot and instead barf up with INVALID SYSTEM DISK, INSERT BOOT DISK AND HIT ENTER TO RETRY (or something just like it).

Anyway, I figured the hard disk wasn't that old and so I powered down and unplugged it. I noticed the ribbon cable wasn't quite straight (it was sort of folded onto itself, but not perpendicular to the wires), so being obsessive-compulsive as I usually am, I straightened it out, carefully plugged it back in and decided to give it a shot. Lo and behold, I'm blogging this from that computer.

Handy equivalents of Outlook Express keyboard shortcuts for Outlook 2007 users

Outlook 2007 is pretty neat but it's also a little awkward if you've been using Outlook Express a lot (or maybe even previous versions of Outlook). Since I'm a keyboard freak, here's my cheat-sheet of stuff that was really hard to find in the documentation (*cough* context sensitive help my ass! *cough*):

Action	Outlook Express	Outlook 2007
Switch from plain text to HTML (while viewing a message and plain text is the default - which is what everybody should do)	Alt+Shift+H	Ctrl+Shift+W, D
Focus on the folder tree (while in the main interface)	TAB	Ctrl+1
Insert default signature (while composing)	Alt+I, S	Alt+N, G, ENTER
Invoke smart tag (i.e. AutoCorrect Options)'s drop-down menu	not applicable	Alt+Shift+F10

Update: Until I put all the HTML code on one line, the spacing was way off, sorry. My "Preview" button doesn't really Preview. :p