Now pass the blame, and don't blame me

Aaaargh! How hard can it be to get a new computer to shut up?

One of the first settings I hunted out when I got it was to set the Windows Personalised Sound Scheme (or whatever it's called) to "no sounds". Then I went back and found the extra ticky-box for "and don't play the bloody Windows start-up sound, either". Is wanting "no sounds" but still enjoying the start-up jingle really such a common use-case that you'd make it the default?

Then of course, I had to find the setting in Outlook to let it know that when it notifies me of an upcoming appointment, the pop-up window is just fine and I don't need the bingley-beep as well. I appreciate applications are different from the OS, but I still think Outlook could examine your system preferences and default to something more in line with expectations.

Anyway, having thus oppressed my laptop it is wreaking its revenge by sporadically ignoring the headphones. Despite them being firmly jammed into the socket, the wretched machine decides that it would rather play staunchly through the speakers. Which is why I treated the office to a good chunk of Rammstein's America a week or two back.

Following that, I got into the habit of checking carefully (low volume, start music with headphones not on my head) each morning. It didn't happen again. Until I got lax about checking, and the whole world got a nice burst of the intro riff to A13 Trunk Road To The Sea yesterday.

Bloody thing.

Still, on the plus side, the file-renaming behaviour on Windows 7 is much nicer than on XP.

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey

Well, as I rather expected, my bento didn't make it into the 20 finalists of the competition :)

The winners and finalists are pretty impressive, though, so I don't exactly feel like I was robbed. If you're the sort of person who likes looking at pretty lunches, then they're asking people to vote for their favourite finalists to determine the ranking order.

Nutritionally speaking, I think I prefer mine over some of the finalists' - there's one that seems to be made of nothing but pasta. At least one (the cherry blossom one, if you're looking) is so artistically impressive that I can't imagine daring to eat it. Some of them are awesome, though, and look both pretty and delicious. I think maybe I'll stick to trying to cook tasty food, and sod the appearance :)