Last year when I built a new machine I purposefully built the machine with lots of power so that I could have multiple different environments and insulate myself from the loads of crap-ware that inevitably ends up on my machine.

Virtual machines allow me to download and try some utility in a sandbox where I know I can return to a previous state.

I opened one of my virtual machines and saw the screen posted on the right.  If this were on my host machine I think I'd need a new pair of underwear.  I don't have the time to rebuild a machine and so screens like the one of the right scare me.  However that is a virtual machine that had the ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview 2 on it.  So, am I going to try and diagnose?  Nope.  Just create another...it's beautiful.

"TopicProvider.cs," the developer shouted, indicating someone in the room had committed an updated project file, but not the new file.  Humbled, I quickly went to my sandbox and added and committed the file.

"TopicProviderTests.cs," came another shout.  Again quickly I added the file.

Feeling embarrassed that I missed committing two files, I noticed that I had no icon overlays on my files, indicating my status with the CVS repository.  No matter what I did I couldn't get the overlays to come back, and boy I was missing them.  You don't realize how often you use the visual cues they provide until they're gone!

I tried:

• Rebuilding overlay icons in TortoiseCVS Preferences
• Rebuilding icons with TweakUI (one of Microsoft's Power Toys)
• Reinstalling TortoiseCVS

None of the above worked.  The only thing I could think of was that I had recently installed Office 2007, which installed a folder synching program called "Groove".  I thought maybe Groove worked similarly to CVS and provided some icon overlay to notify you of a change.

Some digging provided the following provided the following from the TortoiseCVS Page:

The number of overlays allowed by Windows is limited to 15 in total. Windows itself uses 4 of those, leaving the remaining 11 to be used by other applications. If you have other software installed that uses icon overlays, the limit may be exceeded, causing some overlays not to be shown.

To resolve this problem, either uninstall the other software altogether, or manually remove one of the other icon overlay handlers. This can be done by editing the registry. Use at your own risk! You can delete [unused] entries at HKLM/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers.

A quick check of the registry key above showed the following:

Notice the number of Groove icons.  Windows sorts the registry based on Alpha, and this must've been found somewhere else, because if you look, TortoiseSVN stores it's overlays by preceeding the name with an integer.  Very smart!!

My TortoiseCVS overlays disappeared when I had installed Groove due to the limitation that Windows has on overlays.  I uninstalled Groove and there appeared my TortoiseCVS overlays.  Here's my registry after:

Completely evolutionary thinking that prompted someone in the SVN camp to notice this problem and figure they should make themselves first in the registry all the time and therefore never have users experience what I did.

This is the second-edition of a post I made a long time ago on a different blog.  I'm posting it because of a post made by Eric Bowden about his new approach to personal email management.

"So here is the approach:  I have a dedicated domain name "scrappydog.com" with just one email user (me).  All email to any email address in the scrappydog.com domain lands in my inbox.  This allows me to created a separate dedicated email address for every organization I do business with, and I can create a one off random address for any interaction I want."

In the comments Tony Toews quickly points out a flaw in Eric's plan:

"However, once the spammers start using your domain in their spam emails you will be inundated with bounces.  Several of my domains are getting hundreds of bouncers per day.  And you will be forced to created individual email accounts on your server.  So keep track of all those account somehow."

Currently I have a two tools (both free) that I use for spam management beyond the provided spam filters:

SpamGourmet

SpamGourmet.com is a free service that allows you to generate disposable email addresses.  Once you create an account, you can create unlimited disposable email address.  If my username is "Tim", I create a disposable email address using the following pattern: <disposableIdentifier>.<maxEmails>.<username>@spamgourmet.com. If I was signing up for an account with CNN.com I would use the email address CNN.20.Tim@spamgourmet.com.

Any email sent to that address will be forwarded to my real email address.  I use this service for websites that require an email address for signing up and I may wish to receive emails in the future.  Having SpamGourmet allows me to make sure the website hasn't sold my email address.  If my email address is ever sold I will know who sold it, by the identifier I used to create it.  Also, given that I've set a maximum number of emails, if it does get sold, I won't get inundated with emails.

It should be noted that SpamGourmet comes with many slick advanced options, whereby the situation described above by Tony can also be averted easily.

SpamBox

SpamBox.us allows the same type of service, however you don't need to create an account.  Again, all emails to that account are forwarded to your real account which is hidden.  SpamBox is time based.  You have to go to their website to create an email address and while creating the address you specify how long before the email address is deleted.  I use this service for websites that require an email address for signing up and I'm fairly certain I don't care if I ever hear from them again.

Do I trust SpamBox and SpamGourmet not to sell my email?  Not entirely. They say they won't, but  you never know.  The way I see it though, is that if they do in fact sell it, it'll only becoming from one source rather than 35-50 accounts I have opened around the internet.