March 2008 – Thoughts from "him"

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Katrina victims may have to repay money – Life- msnbc.com
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You know, I don’t see what is so hard about this. It’s roughly THREE YEARS since the hurricane happened, and we as a country still can’t get our act together?

Where’s the difficulty? Somebody verifies that John or Jane Doe used to live in the house that got destroyed. Simple; access the Louisiana DMV records and look at their license or some other State ID. They don’t have ID, "Sorry… no can do; we can’t verify you. Here’s a list of other possible sources". Check. They have ID, and the person matches the photo, "Here’s your money; sorry about the delay." Check.

Am I missing something?

Now some people may have to pay back some or all of what they were given. I see where this may only be those who weren’t eligible in the first place, but doggonit, how in the heck did those folks get anything in the first place? This ISN’T trying to put someone on the moon! And they did THAT with slide rulers!

Give me a break, America. When are we going to get it together?

Had to deal with this one? I have… just recently in fact.

I received my complimentary Product Key from Microsoft (thanks to the InstallFest put on by Joe Healy and Jeff Barnes of said company!) and couldn’t figure out where in the heck to put it. Then I put it down for a few weeks until this evening when I got the dreaded "this trial will expire in blah blah blah blah blah…" you get the picture.

Well, I did some digging and found the ray of hope; it’s on MSDN at this URL. Turns out the way to paradise is through your Control Panel. The instructions are written for Visual Studio 2005 and Windows XP, but they work just fine for Vista and Visual Studio 2008. My adaptation of the instructions are listed below, with PICTURES!. Oh, and the MSDN instructions are italicized; my comments are not.

To upgrade Visual Studio 2005 2008 Trial Edition

On the Start menu, click Control Panel.
In Control Panel, open Add or Remove Programs.
Select Microsoft Visual Studio ~~2005~~ 2008 Professional and then click Change/Remove.
On the Visual Studio ~~2005~~ 2008 Maintenance screen, enter the Product Key in the section Upgrade to Visual Studio ~~2005~~ 2008 Professional and then click Upgrade.

There should be 5 Product Key boxes in the lower left hand corner of the second image below but I got way too happy with my CTRL + C (dang it!). The second image is what you’ll see working your way through the Uninstall/Change process. The second image is the "all done, all good" confirmation.