The Geekorium

Had a strange problem using the new Microsoft Windows Live Sync Beta. It’s working fine on one of my computers, but on the other one, it drops a letter when I set up a folder to sync.

See what I mean?

For example, if I want to sync a folder like D:\My Videos, the program accepts the folder I want as D:\y Videos and then creates this new folder for syncing. Or it might sync D:\Archives as D:\rchives. On my other computer - no issues.

Investigating a bit, I discovered it doesn’t happen on my other drives (C:, F:). My D drive is different, in that I’ve moved the location of my My Documents folder to D. In a quick test, I discovered that moving it again to a subfolder of D removes the issue. It’s not a permanent solution however, as a) I like having my documents folder in the root of my secondary drive, and b) I would have to move 220Gb of data to an external drive and back again as you can’t move the location to a subfolder of the current location.

So I’ve sent feedback to Microsoft using the inbuilt “report a problem” menu in the beta. I did it in two parts though, so this post is my way of putting it all in one place, and on the off chance that someone is having a similar issue, they might get some comfort knowing that it’s not their fault (well it is, but only ever so slightly).

People here are always joking that my boss and I need to clone ourselves. Usually because computers seem to only behave when we’re peeking over someone’s shoulders. With the “Digital Education Revolution” (more computers per school), having a clone seems like it might be the only way to keep on top of it all.

Seems someone at Microsoft has a sense of humour about it, and sent us this clever “cloning kit” to promote their range of management tools and software licensing options. I though it very clever.

Kinda seems a bit naughty!

Matt is a fellow school support officer, doing ICT at another large metropolitan high school. He’s highly qualified and extremely knowledgeable, and a huge Microsoft fanboy. He’s my first port of call for questions about Windows Server and Active Directory, as I know he’s always on top of the latest information from Redmond.

Commander Keen also has an iPhone fetish. For months he paid me out about mine, but it turns out he really was just jealous. So now he has one of those fancy ones that does video and your taxes. They are pretty neat I guess.

He looks out for his friends and is willing to drop everything to help out a mate. He’s a prolific poster on the ICT help forum and email lists we have in the department, and his answers are actually helpful¹ . Since he joined Twitter, I’ve discovered he knows half the geeks in Adelaide already.

So if you want to follow someone who really knows their tech, Microsoft², Open Source, and other geeky stuff and is super friendly and a good mate of mine — hit up @Talie5in.