GeezBlog

It’s one of Corel’s more obscure bugs.  Word Perfect x4 will fail when importing a JPEG file if a previous export (of anything) to PDF has been done.

This supposedly only happens on multi-core processors, but that includes most all of them these days.  Word has it that Corel won’t fix this in x4 but that it is fixed in x5.  I run x4 in Windows 7 64 bit – even though Corel says it won’t run on W7 – and it works just fine apart from this bug.

The problem can be avoided by manually deleting a directory.  This has to be done after each export to PDF.  After making hidden files and folders visible, delete this directory:

C:Users<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Corel\WordPerfect Office X4\User Config

You won’t lose anything unless you have created your own “named settings”.  Another way to skin this cat without making the hidden visible is to paste this into a command promt window or line (“cmd” or “run” in the start button search):

rd /s /q "%APPDATA%CorelWordPerfect Office X4User Config"

As always, YMMV, and do your own homework to confirm before trying anything I suggest here.

Seriously.  Friends, it isn’t absolutely necessary to add an apostrophe (you know, that little ” ‘ “) to every word that ends in “s”.  Really.  Really!

It’s == it is.  Its == indicates that something belongs to it.  The apostrophe in that first “It’s” indicates a contraction, not a possessive.  The second “Its” is already a possessive and doesn’t need an apostrophe.  Like “his” and “hers”.

What’s next, “hi’s” and “her’s”.  Sheesh.  Don’t get me started on “their”, “they’re”, and “there”…  “Or excessive use of quotation marks.”

“Quantum Leap” and “Begs the question” – we will talk about those some other time.

Since updating to FireFox 4, I’ve noticed a very irritating fuzzyness in many web fonts.  It seems to be a common complaint.

Suggestions floating around on the interweb include fiddling with the ClearType tuner and installing IE9 to get the updated DirectWrite.  Neither helped.

What did help – a lot – is turning off hardware accelleration.  No doubt at the expense of graphics performance with some current (or maybe future) web content.

I guess we have to start somewhere, so how about a little biography and the usual disclaimer?  This blog is the newer version of the old website at Beezmo.com.  Anything you read here may or may not be true, correct, grammatical, or sensible.  If you find something useful or interesting, great.  If not, move on.  There’s nothing for you here…

I’m an old guy.  I live in the Pacific Northwest: Washington State, US of A.  One wife, one kid.  The kid lives in Japan – more about that here: BeezBlog.   I’ve been in the computer hardware business – designing, mostly, and writing device drivers – with the same small company for over 40 years.

Personal interests include computer stuff, vegetable gardening, saltwater fishing, and hanging at the cabin.  And trying to learn Japanese.  “Trying” is the operative word here.

Computing hardware under current ownership consists of several Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads and IdeaPads, an Acer Aspire One netbook, and a couple of white-box EVGA builds.  Oh, and Sun SPARC and Opteron boxes for board and driver testing.  All my machines (save the netbook and IdeaPads) are multi (multi, multi, multi…) boot and/or virtual hosts for many OS versions.  This narrative will (probably) be mostly odd notes about those machines.

Let’s give it a rest for now.  This bloggage is wearing on an old guy.