By the title alone, Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2009), I would have never thought to even take a look at this movie. However, since a friend sent me the link I decided to check it out…

… and it looks AWESOME.

The movie started, and had incredibly well done CGI, but that was about it. I think I actually liked the plot of SciFi’s Alice much better than this one. There’s was at least an original take on a classic, but that’s life.

The movie kept my attention throughout the whole film, so I won’t say it was bad. It just wasn’t quite as awesome as I had hoped.

Anyway, so it’s a neat film. If you get a chance to see it, I would still recommend watching it, but on DVD.

I wish I could say the process went without a hitch, but it was actually a pain. Not because installing was a pain, but because I used the Microsoft e-Delivery system.

The Microsoft e-Delivery system has an executable that runs to Authorize, Download and Unpack an ISO (CD/DVD image) for you. This sounds fine, except the first time I ran it, it ran “successfully” - downloaded content, unpacked and created an ISO. I burned and the install failed.

Ends up, the downloader only downloaded part of the ISO. I presume the AMD64 part, and not the Intel 64, since I was able to see a bunch of AMD64 files, and no x64 files. So after a failed install, I re-ran the downloader and this time my ISO was 3.0GB instead of 1.32GB.

With the full installation media this time, the install was super quick.

In any case, everything is back up and running smoothly and no more Expiration Notices! Hooray.

One thing I’ve found particularly annoying is trying to do work in two separate spreadsheets. In Excel 2007, the default functionality is to open any and all spreadsheets in a single Excel window. If you’re like me and have dual monitors and are trying to design a new spreadsheet, copy information from one to another, or even just compare information in two separate document — this can be a HUGE chore.

Fortunately, there is a way to disable this behavior and have Excel open each spreadsheet in a new window.

1. Open Excel 2007.
2. Left-click the Office 2007 button in the upper left.
3. Select “Excel Options” in the lower right.
4. Select “Advanced” in the left pain.
5. Scroll down to the “General” section.
6. Check “Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE).”
7. Click OK.
8. Done.

It’s quick and easy, and now you can have two separate Excel spreadsheets each open on a separate monitor.

Now if only I could figure out how to do this for PowerPoint…

The Closing Ceremony was interesting. As an interesting fact, the 2010 Olympics Opening and Closing were the first in history to be held in doors. As such, it was a $40 million dollar production with singing, dancing, short speeches from celebrities, and, of course, the passing of the Olympics to Sochi, Russia for the 2014 Olympics.

Prior to the Closing Ceremony, we watched the final USA vs Canada hockey game, which was a great game. While it was disappointing that Team USA didn’t win like they did when they stomped Canada last week, it was exciting all the way until the end, with a sudden death over time round.

There was some additional coverage of the victory ceremonies as well. I really liked this recap of the Olympics, showing highlights and medalists for the various events (especially since I didn’t really bother to watch any of them other than Curling and Hockey — but really, were any of them other than those two worth watching? Nah.).

I did a quick check on the stats, and apparently the United States came home with the most Medals, 37. However, Canada came home with the most gold’s at 14 (USA - 9).

All-in-all, the 2010 Olympics were great. The Winter Olympics have always been my favourite (mostly because of Curling and Hockey), so it’s always sad to see them end.

Oddly enough I have had a legal copy ready for awhile, but haven’t bothered to reinstall since everything was “working” fine. Now I’m wishing I would have done it awhile back to avoid having to go backup all my crap, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall, reinstall and copy back over.

On the plus side, the Windows Home Server is proving to be quite useful for a nice place to store things. And I’ve gotten a lot better about storing long-term documents there, so I have a lot less to copy back over after the reinstall.

If you’ve ever been working in a Multi-User User Productivity Kit (UPK) environment, you may have run across the error “The document ‘EmptySound’ has been deleted. To complete this operation, restore the document.” or several other similar variations.

This type of error is unfortunately going to be common working in a collaborative workspace. The error is simply telling you that either you or another Author has deleted an object within a Module or Topic file that is still being referenced. In order to publish your UPK content successfully, you will need to either remove the reference to the deleted content, or restore the content.

Fortunately, when working in the Multi-User version of UPK, there is an extra “Deleted Documents” repository. This repository will contain any deleted items (including version history) of anything that has ever been deleted. This repository cannot be altered by Authors, so in essence, no one can ever truly “accidentally” delete something.

To restore a deleted document using the Multi-User version of the User Productivity Kity, you will need to complete the following steps:

1. From the Library screen, you will need to click on the drop-down button for the View field (which will normally indicate Details View) on the View toolbar, and select Deleted Document. A list of all content objects that have been deleted (but not purged) will be displayed.
2. Right-click on the document that you wish to restore, and select Restore from the context menu. This will be the only option that is available on this context menu.

The document will be restored to the Library, and it will be placed back in the folder it was originally deleted from. If you want to see where the document is going to be restored to, the location is also shown in the Original Location column in the Deleted Documents view.

As an additional note, restore the document will cause an additional “version” of the document to be available in the version history (as will originally deleting the document). Not that this really matters, but if you’re wondering why a couple of extra versions might now be visible, this is why.

I’ve caught a few random Team USA Hockey games, but this was the big game that I was really interested in. What could be more exciting in hockey than USA vs Canada? Two great rivals, with a majority of the players who know each other from the NHL - either as rivals or sometimes the same team, now back to their respective countries.

In doing my part to support the claims of epic viewership, I too was compelled to watch this game — and I am glad I did! It was an excellent match. Both teams put on quite a show…

I was a little disappointed that this aired on MSNBC instead of regular NBC, which basically meant I had to watch it in SD instead of HD. While not the end of the world, this was a pretty huge game and would have been worth putting on one of their HD channels (at least locally).

Team USA upset Canada with a 5-3 stomping that was a tense game all the way to the end. With this win, Team USA finished first in their group and received a bye into the Men’s hockey quarter-finals along with an extra day of rest.

After the game there was a small story about this potentially being the last game that NHL players are allowed to compete in the Olympics. Initially I was suspecting an Olympic ruling, but instead it’s a greedy ruling by the NHL. They are upset with the two weeks of downtime they have every 4 years during the Winter Olympics, and feel it “hurts sales.”

To be honest, I would be skipping any NHL game during that time, and would only be watching the Olympic games anyway. All they will be doing is making USA Hockey teams look bad to other countries and even casual viewers by not sending our best players. In my opinion, this is a stupid move because seeing Team USA smack Canada around in Hockey was definitely a huge motivator to watch more hockey for me. I guess we will see how this pans out…

And now, back to Curling…

Earlier this week Sonja had a co-worker who had a few Skyforce tickets that were going to waste, so we had the opportunity to go see a Sioux Falls Skyforce game this evening. Although it did dip into my Curling schedule, it was well worth it.

We’ve been to quite a few hockey games, but the fan base for basketball is easily double that of hockey. You can also tell in it’s sponsorship by the number of give-aways, presentations of donations, and even in the quality of entertainment. The Skyforce game had 5-6 characters interacting with the audience throughout the show, which by themselves were worth watching.

The Sioux Falls Skyforce finished with a 110 - 102 victory over the Dakota Wizards.

Even with all the basketball action though, the big news of the evening is still the USA Men’s Olympic Curling win against Sweden today. Even more incredible, they put Shuster back in the game. I was worried for him, because had they lost there would have been a lot of media backlash on him. However, this win right after being back in the game may just be what the whole team needed.

The only saving grace has been the follow up Olympic Hockey games where Team USA has been cleaning house with everyone. Today’s win of 6 - 1 against Norway, while a bit sloppy, was still a huge improvement over the massive fail-cake that our Men’s Curling team has had.

On the plus side, despite who wins, Sunday’s Hockey game with Team USA vs Team Canada should be a very exciting event!