Holy Cow!

It's getting close for the 2007 Chicago Cubs making the playoffs. I hate to get too excited but it's hard to hold back the excitement.

As I wrote earlier, http://www.cubsmagicnumber.com/ is up and counting, courtesy of Mister Pickles Worldwide Entertainment. To add to the fun of the race, Mister Pickles is accepting photos to post along with the numbers! Send an email to 2007@cubsmagicnumber.com with your Cubs photos today with a small caption and you may be representing the next number!

To get you in the mood, here's mine:

Teddy says "GO CUBBIES! I WANT THIS TO BE THE YEAR!"

Oh, and Cliff Floyd just hit a homer while I wrote this! WOOT! And now BACK TO BACK! DeROSA! GO CUBS!

The Cardinals' Elimination Number

Is 11. Doesn't it really suck to lose 7 in a row down the stretch.

There are over two full weeks of baseball yet to be played this 2007 season and the defending World Series Champs, the St Louis Cardinals are slipping fast. They're third place in the race for the National League Central Pennant. What's worse, they're trailing last years 4th and 5th place finishers.

I guess Cardinal Nation is still hopeful they will win the pennant. Even though they haven't won a game in over a week and only have a slight mathematical change to clinch, you can register for playoff tickets on their website. I'll be sure to register! Mister Pickles would like 4 seats please.

Anyways, it's going to be a great close for the NL Central this year. I'm in the Cubbies Camp and they're looking pretty (at the moment). Because I'm such a nice guy, I'm helping you keep track of the Cardinals woes at http://eliminatecardinals.blogspot.com/, an up to the minute elimination number tracker. Subscribe to the RSS feed so that you always know how inevitable their elimination is.

Delay Your Outgoing Email in Outlook

I discovered a feature in Microsoft Outlook 2007 recently; delayed delivery. I’m not sure this is a new feature in Outlook 2007, but it’s new to me! The feature allows you to schedule an outgoing message to be sent at a specific time rather than the second you press send.

This feature is actually quite useful. Some examples (in ascending order of deception):

-Say you have an important email you want to send and feel it's ready to go out the door. If it's not something that is urgent, why not delay the sending an hour. This way, if you think of something you missed, you can go back and add it instead of replying to your sent message (which looks bad).

-Another use is to delay all outgoing emails to the end of the day so that you can shutdown and be off before the replies come through.

-A creative use is to schedule well written emails to go out at all hours of the night. When the boss asks what you were doing up late composing great emails, you can say that you take your work so seriously, that sleep takes a back seat.

There are two problems I see with the delay delivery feature, though; your Outlook client must be online and delayed messages have the original “sent” time recorded in sent items. The first, must be online, may be because I’m using Outlook in an Exchange 2003 environment. This makes the scheduled emails sent at 2am to make my co-workers think I’m up working at all hours and my bosses amazed a bit more laborious. This may not be an issue with Exchange 2007, but I'm too lazy to actually look. As for recording the sent time inaccurately, that's a pain but goes with the territory.

Anyways, I like the feature and use it often, but I don't do the late night thing.

Here's the instructions on how to do this: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP052427901033.aspx. There are two general ways to delay delivery: setup a rule for all outgoing messages be delayed by a set interval with a max of 2 hours or set a "deliver by" time on individual messages. I prefer only using delay only on particular emails. However, if you're prone to sending emails prematurely and want to avoid that "Did I just send that?" feeling (and perhaps vomiting if it's real bad like this one), then the second is all you.

Marathon Dreams Postponed

For those who care (I'd count who does, but I'd be done before I started), I have no intentions on running the Chicago Marathon this year. The shin splint has sidelined me and I'm border line going to see a physical therapist. The good news is there is no sign of a fracture or anything more serious going on. I'll be regrouping when well and see where I stand for maybe an attempt next year.

My buddy is still going strong though and I plan to attend to spectate.

Disable System Alert Beep in Windows

One of the most annoying things on my Dell Latitude D620 laptop is the system alert beep being extremely loud with no respect to my current volume settings. On the surface, there's no easy way to disable that feature as it's not part of the sound scheme of my profile.

A little searching on Google got me to this page. Step by step on how to do it within Microsoft Vista. For XP, I'm not certain if you can perform the same steps. However, I do know you can go into the registry and disable it that way. I do not recommend that for average computer users, so perform those steps with caution.

Another improvement

Mister Pickles World Wide Enterprises has acquired the rights to www.misterpicklesblog.com. In a move in line with the overall goal of world domination, you should now visit www.misterpicklesblog.com to see these words of entertainment.

I accept full responsibility for this change and I appreciate your cooperation in the matter. We will get through this change with reckless abandonment. We will make it down the stretch.

The Chicago Cubs Magic Number

Is 24 and is a bit higher than I would like. I've re-launched http://www.cubsmagicnumber.com/ and will be updating it during this final month of baseball. The Cubs have a chance and could make the playoffs, but let's not get too far along.

Enjoy the number and I hope it will be updated very often! Go Cubs!