Mysterious Disappearing Icon

Have you ever been annoyed by the green "Safely Remove Hardware" icon that often disappears from the system tray when you go to disconnect an external USB device? There is a nice way to avoid that frustration by creating your own permanent shortcut that accomplishes the same purpose.

I found the basic idea for this tip offered by a blogger named Raymond. I have embellished his basic concept and fleshed it out a little bit.

If your green "Safely Remove Hardware" continues to disappear from your system tray even if you have it marked as "Always show" in your customized taskbar properties, then try the following steps:

1. Create a dummy shortcut (for example, copying an existing shortcut to your desktop).
2. Right click on the shortcut and select the "Properties" menu option at the very bottom
3. Select the "General" tab
4. In the field at the top, type in some meaningful title like "Safely Remove Hardware"




5. Next, select the "Shortcut" tab
6. In the shortcut's "Target:" field, type the following *CaSe SeNsItIvE* entry:
   
   rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll



7. In the "Start in:" field, enter "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\" (without the quotations)
8. Optional: In the "Comment:" field, add a descriptive comment something like:
   
   Use when Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in system tray




9. Optional: Set the green icon by clicking the "Change Icon..." button and
   into the field at the top, copy and paste the following:
   
   %SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\hotplug.dll




10. Click the "OK" button at the bottom to save your work.
11. Move or copy the new shortcut to your desktop, start menu, quick launch menu, or any other preferred location

One final tip: when you double-click on the shortcut to open it, be sure to check the "Display device components" box in the lower left corner. That will provide amplifying information to make an informed choice about which device to close. Otherwise, you might be stuck with multiple entries all reading "USB Mass Storage Device", making it impossible to distinguish which entry represents a large external USB hard drive and which entry indicates a small USB thumb drive.

Presto! Simply by activating this shortcut, you can now easily invoke the "Safely Remove Hardware" process even without the icon in your system tray.

For Geeks Only: Favicons

Where have I been? Out in the ozone, I guess. I recently discovered four facts about creating a web page that only geeky webmasters could appreciate:

1. Favicons need not be named "favicon" (or more accurately, "favicon.ico")
2. Favicons need not be placed in the same folder as the html page that invokes it
3. Sub-pages need not have the same favicon as the parent page; similarly, …
4. Individual frame pages can have their own separate and distinct favicon

On the other hand, the path name must apparently be specified in full, not just relational (e.g., "http://mysite.verizon.net/gumby32/myfavs/images/portable-apps.ico" and not "/images/portable-apps.ico").

Regardless of coding technique, the real problem remains: finding images that retain any clarity of meaning when reduced to the required miniscule size of 16 x 16 pixels. Good luck with that.

Distress

I can't see an end. I have no control, and I don't think there's any escape. I don't even have a home anymore.

Yes, it's definitely time for a new keyboard.

Quotations in the News

Be careful what you wish for:

"Glenn's like the high school government teacher so many wish they'd had."
-- Sarah Palin

"Please, America, take this man for what he says.…Read Mein Kampf."
-- Glenn Beck on Obama

"Is this where we're headed?"
-- Beck, showing photos of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin

Who in their right mind ever wished they'd had a radical, right-wing emotional basket case for their high school government teacher???

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In over his head:

"It's a relatively small leak compared to the volume of water in the Gulf.… Come on, this is America, there will be frivolous lawsuits."
-- BP CEO Tony Hayward

As Fox News anchor Shep Smith admonished, "At least act like you care."

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Tone deaf:

"When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak? Everybody's focused on BP and Halliburton and Transocean.…The greeniacs have been driving our oil producers off the land."
-- Rush Limbaugh

Wasn't Rush supposed to move to Costa Rica? Whenever he goes, it won't be soon enough.

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Real Americans:

"[Elena Kagan has] no clue how real Americans live."
-- Rush Limbaugh

And the loudmouth blowhard Rush Limbaugh certainly does, what with his 37-million-dollar-per-year salary and his 13-million-dollar New York City penthouse. On second thought, he has been married and divorced three times (family values, anyone?) and was addicted to prescription drugs (after speaking forcefully on his show that drug abusers should be sent to jail, no less), so maybe he does share a common bond after all.

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Source for all quotations: Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose dated 15-20 May 2010

Making the Grade, Part Deux

In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, here are Wesley's grades for the school year to date in the same manner that I posted Heather's grades a few days ago:

Subject	P1	P2	P3
English	C	A	A
Mathematics	B+	A	B+
Health/Phys Ed	A+	A+	A
Social Studies	A	B+
Science			A
Computer Tech	A
Wood Shop		A+
Art			A

I consider Wesley's first marking period "C" in English as an indictment more of his teacher than of Wesley or his performance. Wesley's middle school has an on-line reporting system where teachers are required to post grades every two weeks, and parents can then log on to monitor the child's progress. That system also allows teachers to post all class assignments, but teachers are not required to do so. Regrettably, Wesley's English teacher steadfastly refused to utilize that feature.

I should point out that his English teacher was not his only teacher who declined to post class assignments to the on-line site. His other teachers, though, had relatively straightforward daily assignments with an occasional project thrown in periodically.

English class was a different story. Wes had to juggle three weekly assignments due on Fridays: a vocabulary list for which he had to look up definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology; a composition complete with first draft, second draft, and final draft; and answering a series of questions from a reading assignment. In addition, during each 9-week grading period, he had to complete any four projects out of nine possible choices. All four assignment types (vocabulary, composition, questions, and projects) were extracted from different scattered sections of booklets called a Partner Discussion Guide (PDG) that accompanied each book the class was assigned to read. [Much to our chagrin, we did not discover one additional unpublicized complication until later: once the class moved on to a new book/PDG, students could no longer submit projects relating to any previous book.]

Unfortunately, little of this information was made clear to Wesley, and none of it at all was communicated to me—that is, not until a knock-down, drag-out, face-to-face meeting I had with his teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal himself at the end of the first marking period. That meeting became necessary after a frequent but futile exchange of e-mails in which I repeatedly requested that assignments be posted on-line so that I as his parent could monitor Wesley's compliance.

Alas, all of this was to no avail: even after our meeting, the teacher still never posted assignments on-line in any meaningful way. However, the meeting did at least provide enough insight so that I—and more importantly, Wesley—could better determine his exact weekly and quarterly (project) assignments. From that point forward, Wesley was able to do the work and do it well, as his English grades in the second and third marking periods will attest.

I find it particularly ironic that such a marked failure in communications occurred with an English teacher, of all subjects. And I am not Don Quixote: I will not joust with windmills indefinitely. The only reason I pounded my head against the wall for as long as I did is that it feels so good when I stop.