San Francisco Bay Area Cajun Zydeco Dance Calendars

Looking for live Cajun and zydeco music in the San Francisco Bay Area? Check out the SFBAYou.com Calendars. The calendars are updated several times a week and are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. If you are unable to open the calendar files, then install the Adobe Acrobat Reader for free.

Logging into Windows 10 with a black screen and a white arrow cursor

I've been using Open Broadcaster Software's OBS Studio to capture the display output, audio output, and audio input on my Windows 10 computer. While experimenting with it, I changed the resolution of my display. After doing that and using my computer for while, I shut down my computer. When I came back to turn on the computer again, I saw a black screen with a white arrow cursor that moved when I moved my mouse. What to do? Fortunately I found this article on Microsoft's site. Just in case this article disappears for some reason, I'll quote the important part here:

At the black screen, press the Ctrl key once on an attached physical keyboard. (You won’t see any visible change, but pressing the Ctrl key will place the cursor in the password box that you’re currently not able to see.) Now type the password of the user that just signed out and press Enter.This will sign you back into Windows and the desktop will appear. If you failed to sign in because you mistyped the password, press Enter once more. Then retype the password and press Enter.

Thankfully the advice above worked for me.

Automated compacting and copying of Microsoft Outlook PST files

Here's a way to automatically compact and backup all of your Microsoft Outlook PST data files on your Windows PC using only free software, AutoIT and PowerShell. AutoIT is freeware, and PowerShell is included in Microsoft Windows. Compacting your PST files before you back them up can reduce the amount of disk space required both at the source and destination locations of your backup.

So, to get started:

1. Get the free AutoIT Full Installation and AutoIT Script Editor from the AutoIT Downloads page.
2. Ensure PowerShell scripts that you create can run on your computer.
3. Create an AutoIT script that, when the Mail control panel is open, will compact all PST files and then close the Mail control panel.
4. Create a Powershell script that opens the Mail control panel and then executes the AutoIT script.

Here below are the AutoIT and Powershell scripts that I am running on my Windows 8.1 PC with Outlook 2013. I have a Windows Shortcut to my PowerShell script so that every time I log into my PC, my Outlook PST data files are compacted and backed up before Outlook is opened. I use the PowerShell script to also open other applications so that I may work on them while the Outlook PST data files are being backed up. Please feel free to copy the scripts below and modify them to work for you.

I am using Synology's Cloud Station to keep most of the data files on my laptop in sync with a Synology NAS, but Cloud Station doesn't work well with Outlook PST data files, which is why Cloud Station is configured by default to exclude the synchronization of files with a PST extension.

AutoIT script

PowerShell script

School and Study Tips, LinkedIn Tips, Sony, SCU, SJSU, and Del Mar Posts Have Moved

Are you looking for content on this site and got the error "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."? If so, then these links may help:

• For school and study tips: The content that was on this site was updated and moved to a new Study and School Tips site.

• For LinkedIn tips: The content that was on this site was either deleted because it was obsolete or updated and moved to the LinkedIn Notes blog.

• For Santa Clara University MBA students and alumni: Information about online social networks was updated and moved to the Santa Clara University MBA Notes blog.

• For San Jose State University students and alumni: Information about online social networks was updated and moved to the San Jose State University Notes blog.

• For Del Mar High School students and alumni: Information about connecting with classmates was updated and moved to the Del Mar High School Connection blog.

• For downtown San Jose residents and visitors: The content that was on this site was deleted because it was obsolete.

• For former and current Sony employees and contractors: Information about online social networks was updated and moved to the Unofficial Sony Alumni Social Networking Sites blog.

For techies: Yes, I know I could have used 301 redirects to make the transition of content from one place to another as seamless as possible for machines doing search engine optimization (SEO) as well as humans. But there are a lot of reasons I didn't do that. To start, I saved some money by moving my web site content with low traffic to Blogger sites. I might further elaborate on the reasons I didn't use 301 redirects in a future post.

Updated Personal Blog, Added Picture in Title

I started this blog in 2005, so 10 years later it seemed like a good time to update it to take advantage of features that Blogger makes easy to add to a site. Most of the features were probably available in 2005 with WordPress plugins, but I wasn't that serious of blogger. I just wanted a decent looking place where I could occasionally share information that I think might be useful to others. The same holds true today, but I thought it might be fun to take advantage of features that are now easy to implement in Blogger.

So during this upgrade of this personal blog, I figured out one thing that might be useful to you if you're using Blogger: How to put a picture next to the title.

You can see in the upper left corner of this page that my picture is next to the title "Rick Upton". It took a little experimentation to figure out how to do this.

Taking Video from DVD+RW Discs to an MPG file to YouTube

I recorded video to a DVD+RW disc. When I open the disc on my computer, I see a number of files, including files with the extension VOB. Each VOB file is a segment of the complete video that I want to be able to play on my computer and upload to YouTube.

To combine five VOB files on my DVD+RW disc into one file called newfile.mpg on my computer's hard drive, I executed the following command:

Combining VTA Light Rail or Bus Schedules into One Personalized Schedule

On the Santa Clara County's Valley Transit Agency (VTA) website, schedules are available in text format. The problem is that I want one schedule that shows me when the next light rail train is coming at a station I am going to depart from, but the VTA site doesn't provide such a schedule. You might want a single schedule to show you when the next bus is coming for a stop that serves multiple bus lines. So here below are some rough instructions as to what I do to combine two schedules into a single schedule, two times (one for northbound, and one for southbound). If you have any questions about the process, post a comment and hopefully I'll have some time to make the instructions clearer.

Removing leading and trailing spaces from Oracle SQL*Plus spooled output

Oracle's SQL*Plus application spools fields with spaces even if you try to trim the fields, because SQL*Plus is "doing you a favor" by making the fields line up. One way to work around this is to concatenate all fields into one big field so that SQL*Plus spools one big field. However, when I tried this with some very large fields, I got an error implying that I was concatenating too many characters. So how to work around this?

Here's what I did: I let SQL*Plus spool a tab delimited file with leading and trailing spaces (trailing blanks for all fields except for a field which uses STRAGG and had one leading space). Then I created an awk script to remove the leading and trailing spaces with code similar to the following:

Showing Outlook 2007 Calendar Appointments in Different Colors for Different Statuses

In Outlook 2003's calendar, appointments and meetings marked as "Free", "Tentative", "Busy", and "Out of Office" all automatically appeared differently on the calendar view to make it easy to visually distinguish them. Outlook 2007 offers the same "Show time as" options, but does not automatically visually distinguish these statuses by default.

I wanted this feature back in Outlook 2007, because I use my calendar not only to block out time for meeting and appointments which I mark as "Busy", but also as reminders for things I'd like to do if convenient, which I mark as "Free". Items I mark as "Free" are things like "Read the corporate newsletter", "Drink water", etc.

One way to visually distinguish meetings and appointments in Outlook 2007 is to manually assign each meeting and appointment a category which is associated with a color. This is what I did at first, but thought there must be a better way.

Oracle Wallet and tracing didn't work when executed by cron jobs

For those who may find it helpful, here's a problem I ran into along with the solution.

When a Korn shell script using Oracle 10gR2 client's sqlplus was run manually at the command prompt, the script successfully used an Oracle Wallet to log in and run an SQL script.

However, when the same ksh script was run with a cron job, I would get the following error:
"ORA-12534: TNS:operation not supported".

Workaround for SQL*Loader-297/ORA-01756 problem

Upgraded Oracle SQL*Loader (a.k.a. sqlldr) from a 9i version to a 10gR2 version on two computers, with release 10.2.0.1.0 on one computer and release 10.2.0.4.0 on the other.

Some ctl files have the following line:

flag "'N'",

When I'd run sqlldr release 10.2.0.4.0 or the 9i version of sqlldr, the above line caused no problems.

But when I'd run it on release 10.2.0.1.0, I'd get this error:

SQL*Loader-297: Invalid syntax or bind variable in SQL string for column FLAG.
ORA-01756: quoted string not properly terminated

I found I was able to get the ctl files to work with release 10.2.0.1.0 by changing the problematic line to this:

Outlook 2007 changing font and other formatting on reply or forward

Outlook 2007 is driving me crazy: I'll reply to an email using my default Outlook font of Calibri. Then I'll open the email I just sent from the "Sent Items" folder and find that the text I just wrote get converted to Time New Roman font. Also, the font for the text for all preceding emails was usually, but not always, also converted to Times New Roman. For example, in an email I'm looking at right now that has a long string of replies from different people, some people's signature line text got converted to Times New Roman, but some signature lines did not.

Value of Excel Formula Won't Show

This problem has driven me nuts on more than one occassion, so I am documenting the solution here for reference. Maybe this will help you.

Problem: Enter formula into cell such as "=B2". After entering formula, instead of seeing the value of the B2 cell, you see "=B2".

Connecting a Sony KDL-19M4000 HDTV to a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BCP laptop

It took me some hours to figure out how to get a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BCP laptop running Windows XP Professional to work with a Sony KDL-19M4000 HDTV the way I wanted it to, so I'm posting these instructions in case they might help someone else.

The instructions haven't been completely walked through end to end yet—they are based on notes. So there may be some missing, unnecessary, and/or incorrect steps.

Places I've Visited

I feel very fortunate to have visited many places around the world. Hopefully, I'll be able to see many more.

PayPal and HTML Pages Created Using Microsoft Word

As I've mentioned before, I use Microsoft Word to maintain the web site for a non-profit. To dip my toes into the waters of PayPal, I decided to go with the simplest option of adding "Buy Now" buttons to the site. To reduce concerns about people tweaking the information sent to PayPal, I decided to take advantage of PayPal's encyption option. I found that if I pasted the block of code from PayPal into the HTML editing window of Microsoft Word, Word would corrupt the block of code.

Great Soul Food...in Seattle

The Wellington restaurant has some great soul food. I'm not an expert on the subject, but to me the overall quality of the food was the best I've ever had at a soul food restaurant. In addition, the service was extremely good, the atmosphere very pleasant, and the prices quite reasonable.

Our dinner party decided to order a number of entrees and sides so that we could get a taste of a number of different items. We got catfish, ox tail, macaroni and cheese, grits with cheese, okra, collared greens, and much more (sorry, I can't remember it all!)

PayPal for MLK Association

One of my upcoming projects for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley is to enable the organization to accept electronic orders for memberships and tickets online. After taking a look at PayPal's website, it seems like it will be fairly simple and economically feasible to set up online payments using PayPal.

Blog Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

Search engines like sites that are updated frequently. A blog that frequently has new posts will have a home page that changes frequently. But what about previous posts that are archived? They could stay the same forever, unless...

Visiting San Jose

[UPDATE April 27, 2015: I've deleted my pages about visiting San Jose since they were so obsolete. The web site http://www.sanjose.org/ is a good place to start for any visitor planning a trip to San Jose.]

Back in the late 80's I had an idea to write a visitor's guide for San Jose, and distribute it at local book stores, hotels, etc. At the time, visitor information was only available to visitors from either booklets offered by local organizations promoting their interests or within a few pages of larger visitors guide books covering California or San Francisco. The information offered by local organizations were basically advertisements, and the few pages within the larger tourism books failed to cover what I thought a visitor might enjoy in San Jose.