NOTE: My problem was on Windows 7 64-bit, with an installation of Microsoft Office 2007.

For the past few months I have been somewhat obsessed with trying to fix a flaw in my Windows 7 Microsoft Office installation.  It seems that one day, out of the blue, I lost my icons, and they were replaced with the generic white file icons.  Not only does this look ugly compared to the sleekness of Windows 7, but it makes distinguishing between an Excel spreadsheet and a Word document a living nightmare.

At first I tried simply right clicking the file and changing the program that the file opens with by linking it back to the EXCEL.EXE file in the Office folder.  Obviously it didn’t work.  Then I went to the web for help.  That didn’t really turn up anything either.  If Microsoft is working on this problem, they aren’t very up front about it, and it seems that there are many others much like myself who are struggling with trying to get these icons back.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and did some Windows registry diving.  Here’s what I found.

I opened up regedit and went to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT file.  I eventually located the Word.Document.12 (since the version of office I have is v.12) listing in the registry, so I opened that up.  There is a key value under that heading named DefaultIcon.  It pointed to “C:\Windows\Installer\{90120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}\wordicon.exe,2″

Thus, I opened up windows explorer, made sure I could view hidden files, and browsed over to c:\windows\installer.  Of course, there was no {90120000-0030-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE} folder.  I searched all over the internet for the wordicon.exe file and only found an outdated version of it that wasn’t for use with Office 2007.  I had about given up on going that route, until I searched one of my coworkers’ computers and all the files turned up there.  I quickly copied the files over to a flash drive, put them in the same folder on my computer, and restarted.

The blank icons were still there for my excel files, but my coworker and I found that as soon as we changed the default program that opens the .xlsx file from Excel to Adobe Acrobat and then back to Excel, it restored the icon settings back to normal.

So, to sum it all up, my registry was looking in a folder that wasn’t there for the icons that were stored in executables that weren’t there, and even after I restored the exe files it took some convincing to get them to come back.

Hope this helps!   Soon I will post a temporary fix for those of you out there who can’t locate the wordicon.exe, xlicons.exe, etc. files.  It’s comforting to know that there are ways to work around this glitch until Microsoft finally fixes it, whenever that will be.

I’ll never forget the first time I found out about Dan Deacon.   It was a late night scrounging the internet for funny videos, memes and whatnot, and I happened upon Dan’s performance of  “Ohio” on a local news station.  The song was unconventional, the movements were bizarre, the fly was open, and I could only imagine the expressions of all the business men sitting at their early morning breakfast table, sipping their coffee, and watching the whole scene unfold in glorious disbelief.  In a sense, the entire scene was a triumph for weirdness.   See for yourself:

So, after seeing Dan in concert last night, I had to ask myself, “When was the last time I sang ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ with a group of people at the top of my lungs, ran through a massive human tunnel, or even actually had a good time at a concert?”   I grew sick of going to shows a few years ago after coming to the quick realization that, no, I didn’t really care to pay $10 for mediocrity.  Or, I didn’t really care to pay $50 for a “big name act” and still be stuck in the nosebleed section.  Money is tight, so I figure it had better be well-spent.  Also, I’m getting older, and the days of going out for the sake of going are just coming to an end.

To be brief, last night gave me hope that, even amidst my pessimism, there is such a thing as a good concert.  It was memorable, it was fun (even my wife liked Dan), and it was well worth the $10 apeice, even after having to get out of the crowd due to my being punched in the head by dancing/flailing indie-types.

My computer recently downloaded a Microsoft Windows Update called Microsoft Genuine Advantage.  Even though I have a perfectly legitimate copy of Office, the advantage software did not like it.  Well, I did not like the software telling me what to do, so I took matters into my own hands, hitting the blogs hard to find the answer.

Turns out there are many answers out there, so here’s the short of what I did.  You’ll need some medium to semi-advanced computer skills to achieve the win, I think.

This website has a pretty nice walkthough, listed here:

“Step-by-Step Guide to Solve
====================
PART 1 – Uninstall the related update (KB949810)
1. open Command prompt: Start > Run > type “cmd” (without quotes) > press “Enter”
2. paste/ type following command, then press “Enter”:
msiexec.exe /uninstall {B148AB4B-C8FA-474B-B981-F2943C5B5BCD}
* note: a “Microsoft Installer” will popup to uninstall “OGA Notifier” automatically. No user interaction needed.

PART 2 – Kill the Tray Icon
1. open Task Manager (either press Ctrl-Shift-Esc / right click on task bar, select Task Manager)
2. kill “WGATray.exe”
3. go to your Windows system32 folder (default is C:\WINDOWS\system32\)
4. from the menu of the file manager, select Tools > Folder options…
5. select “show hidden files and folders” and uncheck “hide protected system files”
6. locate WGATray.exe and WGALogon.dll
7. rename them to WGATray.old and WGALogon.old
8. open Command Prompt again.
9. type/ paste the following command, then press “Enter”:
regsvr32 %Windir%\system32\LegitCheckControl.dll /u
10. Restart computer

Part 3 – Cleaning up (Optional)
1. delete WGATray.exe, WGALogon.dll and LegitCheckControl.dll from your Windows system32 folder
2. delete registry using Registry Editor (regedit)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\removeremove\WgaNotify

After doing the above, you are free from OGA’s annoying message. Yet, you have to manually disable the patch from Automatic Update.”

Now, the problem I ran into was with part one, which was answered in a comment at the bottom of the blog:

“The code {B148AB4B-C8FA-474B-B981-F2943C5B5BCD} is specific to the US-English installation.

For instance Swedish {DB427EF6-F13E-4AA6-9D40-5D962394774F}, and UK-English {B2544A03-10D0-4E5E-BA69-0362FFC20D18}.

To find out what data ID your OGA Notifier uses for your locale you have to:
1. Run: Regedit
2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurentVersion\Uninstall
3. Here you will find several folders with a similar data ID name. Go into each and every one of them and look for the REG_SZ name: [DisplayName]. This should show something like “Office Genuine Advatage…” or “OGA”.
4. Once you find it perform the same steps as described but replace the data ID with your ID. in “PART I”"

Also, another problem was with deleting WGALogon.dll  – I found some AMAZING free software here:  http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

This freeware allows you to basically kill the processes that windows is running that are locking up the file, in effect “unlocking” the file that you need to dispose of.  Wish I had access to this program a few years ago.

Anyway, I did a bit more noodling around in Regedit and cleaned out some more WGA stuff, and after a quick restart, it was gone.  The first restart blue screened my compy out, which worried me, but a second, hard restart yielded satisfactory results.

*NOTE* – If your copy of Office is pirated, I don’t support using this process on it, of course.

Hope this helps.

Okay………….on with the review!!!!

(via)

1) UGLY -  Take a look at this filthy minger.  UGH!!!!  UGHHHH!!!!!  Who is that?!??  Oh, wait…that’s the lead actress in Mamma Mia, Meryl Streep!  So yes, keep in mind that horrible, horrible face, because that’s what I had to look at for almost 2 straight hours.

2) TONE DEAF – Let’s at least agree on one thing, America:  Pierce Brosnan can’t sing worth a fart.  And he sang and sang and sang in this movie.  I think he sounds like a mix between a drunken David Bowie and the Cookie Monster.  (Apologies to the cookie monster)

3) ANNOYING OLD WOMEN -  Perhaps the worst part of the movie is the whole movie, the entire section after where the sisters of Meryl Streep arrive.  AND WHOA-HO-HO, ARE THEY IN A PARTY MOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!  YAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!  Hyperactive old women, sashaying around like they are in their teens!  Perhaps that would have been a better title for the film.  The only thing worse than teenage pretense is middle age faux teenage pretense.  And what’s up with the “bartender” hitting on the old cougar?  He was probably sneaking quite a few shots when the camera wasn’t on him.  No, wait….oh I get it!  It had nothing to do with the story line, they just wrote that part in to accommodate yet another stupid ABBA tune!

4) Marriage??! – The whole movie sets you up to expect a marriage between the cutesy little bug-eyed star of the movie and the poseur surf guy with the “dangerous accent”, but what’s the shocker???  THERE IS NO MARRIAGE!  Nope, at the wedding she decides to call it off at the altar, exchanging the sacred vows of marriage for a life of “adventure and freedom” just like her mom had!  IT’S A TRAP, HIPPIE FREE LOVE, ABBA STYLE!!!  But wait, there is a marriage!  Oh no, no, no, you mean someone from the film is going to be tied down by the outdated, traditional, conservative notion of marriage?  Inconceivable, but yes, Streep and Brosnan decide to get hitched in an effort to ”not waste a good wedding,” so we can now expect a Mamma Mia 2: Attack of the Tone Deaf Minger Faces.

The night before my wife and I watched this awful film, we had watched another musical:  Hello Dolly!  Now that was a musical folks.  The love story between Cornelius and Irene is just wonderful!  The days of Gene Kelly, alas, are too far gone, and they are dearly missed.  These two films are so far removed that you almost can’t even compare them, much less Singin’ In The Rain.

So okay, I could go on and on about how terrible this movie was.  I did have one good thing to say at the end of it though:  it proved that our new LCD tv can make even a turd look pretty amazing.  Regardless, I still had a headache.

So, it’s been a few months since I whipped up a quick blog post, only to find out soon enough that my humble submission had made its way through the deep, dark recesses of WordPress only to find its way to the front page.

In retrospect, I could care less.

SRSLY, have you seen what makes the front page lately?  “Coolsmurf’s Domain” doesn’t really look like a place that I, nor anyone that I have ever known, would want to visit.  Some weirdo telling me about shows that I care nothing about….nope, don’t care at all.  Ooooh, and look here! A blog post with a video of someone falling out of a car!  HAHAHA!  That sounds like something that would belong on a second-rate blog (like this one!), not on the “prestigious” front page of wordpress.com.  And let us not forget that all-important MUSIQ SOULCHILD “So Beautiful” Barack Obama Remix post.  That’s worth the front page.  For sure.  Or shizzle.  Nizzle?  Western Sizzlin?  Puzzle?

Okay, enough chit chat.  I hope I never make the front page again.  Ever!

Think about this question for a moment:  How often do you think about the far past?  The things that shaped who you are, the defining moments in your life, who you were compared to who you are now?

Here’s another question:  How often do you think about the far future?  Goals, ambitions, and the fact that life is ticking, ticking, ticking away and doesn’t stop until death?  Or even, life after death?

Personally, I don’t think about the far past or the far future much at all, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want to.  And I think that if I did, I would have a much better motivation to live differently in the present.

No, it seems that most of my thoughts revolve around things that happened in the near past, things that I am currently doing, or things that will happen in the near future.  This is a simple way of thought, though.  By narrowing my mind to a limited timeline, I fear that I have tended to miss a great lot of the big picture.

Take the Biblical example of Joseph, who fled from Potipher’s wife’s advances.  He saw the big picture, which allowed him to overcome the present temptation and stay in the path of righteousness.  Undoubtedly this is because he was simultaneously aware of his past relationship with God and the promises of the future with Him.  His awareness of far past and future allowed him to reshape his decisions of the present.

photo via

Picture Via Here.

It’s a mystifying experience, going back to a place where you used to live.  A place that you have long since filed away in the recesses of your memory. There’s something unique about the way it makes you feel, almost as if it validifies once again that these places are real places.  Perhaps there is a piece of you left at the locations where you grew up, and seeing them again through older, wiser eyes allows you to view them with a new perspective, somehow linking the “you” of the past with the present “you”.

I felt something similar to this experience when I took a trip to the same county that I grew up in just recently.  I was there on business, picking up a piece of medical equipment from a small house in the country.  As soon as I stepped out of the company van, it hit me.  I’m not even 100% sure what it was about the place.  The dirt, the smell, the grass, the leaves…it could have been any of them and was probably all of them.  I had flashbacks of me running up dirt mounds while we were building our house in Charlotte, of swinging on tree vines in the back yard next to the woods, of taking off on squirrel hunting “adventures” but never actually getting one, of countless hours spent shooting hoops beside the house, inevitably chasing the ball down weedy ravines when I missed a shot.

I guess there really is a part of me still there, and I suppose there always will be.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I’ll be swinging on that branch, throwing the baseball back and forth with my dad, or moving rocks around on mounds of dirt.  It’s almost as if I see in my mind a younger version of myself, beckoning me to stay a while and enjoy the memory of things past…things that helped to shape the very person that I am today.

I have always heard, but suppose it’s true, that you can take the man from the country, but you cannot take the country from the man.  Even though I now see in my future a rather metropolitan life, I will always have the country.  If not physically, in my memories.