Bidi’s World Microblog Digest for 3/24/2008

Monday, March 24th, 2008

Here are the latest happenings from some of the various microblogs I use across the net.

3/21/2008

  • [twitter] Lots of progress today. Taking off work tomorow to see how much more I can get done before the day is over. - 1:23 am
  • [twitter] Guess it’s time to feed the dog, make coffee, and get my day started. I’m always at a loss on how to start a day off. - 11:51 am
  • [news] How to Match Any Telephone Number to Its Geographical Location (from Friedbeef’s Tech) - 3:08 pm
  • [twitter] At the car wash. Removing the dirt from our christmas trip. - 4:33 pm
  • [twitter] Omw to game night. Living arcanis with my newly leveled ranger. Looking forward to it. - 6:46 pm
  • [twitter] Just heard a promo for Metamorph City on Escapepod. Sounds wicked cool. Going to add it when i get good. - 7:18 pm

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Banish the Microsoft Language Bar

Friday, September 21st, 2007

I had to post this because it is a feature that has driven me nuts for years. Microsoft Office has a feature called the language bar. This is a series of buttons that sit on your task bar to facilitate various accessibility features that come with Microsoft Office. Personally I don’t care for the Microsoft Office line of products in the first place let alone having them put buttons where I don’t really need them without asking. To make matters worse, if you disable this toolbar the “normal way” it just keep coming back when you log back in.

I did a search for more information on the Language Bar and the results were interesting. Almost all of the Microsoft official or unofficial support sites were talking about what the Language Bar is and how to use it. Nearly everyone else was talking about how to get rid of it or how they couldn’t.

It puzzles me why Microsoft would make a product that integrates into their operating systems features but doesn’t follow the same standards for use set by the operating system. When I right click an item in a Windows application I expect a menu. When I click the button in the upper right corner of the screen I expect the program to close. And when I deselect a toolbar from my task manager I expect it to stay deselected.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case for the Language Bar. To that end, I was elated to find an article on the How-To Geek that explains how to make the pesky thing go away for good. The instructions are fairly simple. Apparently, if you right click on the Language Bar while it’s visible there is a “settings” option. In there you’ll find a setting to banish the language bar once and for all.

See the instructions over at the How-To Geek for full details.

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