I recently discussed, with a coworker, the feasibility of changing a logged on user’s desktop wallpaper remotely. It was an interesting problem with quite a number of challenges. The Win32 security model is very complex and I had to jump through a lot of hoops for what I thought would be a fairly simple task. Overall it was a very enlightening experience but I did learn a new appreciation for seteuid(0).
Tag: Open Source
There are times when I need to use my Common Access Card at home. Being a Linux user, I figured this would be challenging to configure. It took a few hours of trying different packages and directions, but I finally have it working. Considering the process isn’t entirely straightforward, I thought it’d be good to document the steps here.
It’s hard to describe just how much I HATE rebooting my computer. If I have to use a Windows computer for any extended period of time, then I always change update policies to disallow automatic reboots. In fact, I usually click the irritating “Remind me in ten minutes” button every ten minutes for three weeks before I finally allow Windows to restart (or until I stop the Automatic Updates service).
So you can imagine how annoyed I was to come into work twice this week to the blue Windows logon screen. Every time this happens it takes me twenty minutes to figure out what I was doing the day before, what I have to do today, and where I stopped with my work. And really what made this so much more painful was that it happened without any advanced warning.
I’m very picky about my desktop environment. I like windows, toolbars, icons, etc. to be arranged in a certain way. Typically, I turn off annoying prompts and nag screens in Windows, and unhide “scary” advanced options in OS X. One hard-to-fix pet peeve is when applications put an icon in the notification area (near the clock) AND leave a tab in the taskbar. This wastes valuable taskbar real estate.
I use Spark on my workstation to connect to the company’s internal IM server. The application works alright, but the contacts window always appears in the taskbar. So I started to think about ways I could programmatically solve my problem.
So I was trying to read a document on my computer at work today, while making notes on a piece of paper. But every five minutes the screensaver would activate, causing me to stop writing, type my password, and find my place in the document again. Needless to say it was quite annoying.
