The Bull Og

Just installed Justin’s Monthchunks. Sweet plugin. If you like it, be sure to send him some PayPal love like I did.

I installed PlanPlus (v4.0) several months ago and have been fighting with it ever since. The problem has been when I tried to sync tasks. I kept getting…

OK Outlook Tasks

HR[8000FFFF] Catastrophic failure

OK FranklinCovey PlanPlus for Outlook TaskList Conduit

Conduit ‘FC Task List’ Error: Unknown error. (65535)

I went back and forth with Franklin Covey and their support was good but in the end, it looks like there were some characters in the fields of a task or some tasks (don’t ask me which) which were problematic.

The workaround?

WARNING/DISCLAIMER: I am about to suggest deleting all of your tasks (with a way to get them back of course.) I provide the advice below as-is with no warranty.

So here’s what you do…

1. Export all of your tasks from Outlook into an Excel file
2. Now (right now!) make a copy of that Excel file and put it somewhere safe
3. Delete all of your tasks from the tasks folder in Outlook
4. In the export, check the tasks one-by-one (pay special attention to the “Notes” field1) to see if you see anything suspicious which you delete and then…
5. Import the tasks from the Excel file back into Outlook

If anything goes wrong, you can always import the backup of the Excel file (step 2!) back into Outlook.

Finally, done with the first round of my blog’s redesign (a customized WordPress theme.) There are a few styling issues to take care of still but I’m happy to have it “out the door.”

From the International Herald Tribune:

“Saudi newspapers now openly decry Iran’s growing power. Religious leaders have begun talking about a ‘Persian onslaught’ that threatens the existence of Islam itself.”

Oh, the irony of Arabs seeing “Persians” as a threat to Islam!!! That is too good…

Talk in Saudi Arabia turns to ‘Iranian threat’

I’ve got a relative in Vancouver and yesterday I realized that I hadn’t sent his Christmas gift yet. Whoops! I went to Amazon.com to have something delivered by the weekend.

I understand that maybe all of Amazon’s inventory is not based in Seattle but I was hoping that in this case (what with Vancouver being across the border from Seattle) they would ship from there and the gift would arrive on time.

Long story short, I couldn’t order the desired gift because Amazon can’t ship this particular video game to Canada. Ugh. So, what did I do? Naturally, I went to Amazon.ca and made the purchase there, but for some reason, the Canadian Amazon can’t do delivery by this weekend.

This morning, I got confirmation via email that the gift has indeed been shipped. When I went to track it, I saw that it originated in Mississauga, Ontario! Maybe I should have found a courier to pick up the order from Amazon.com in Seattle and take it across the border…