Dork Machine

I've been working on beating my computer into submission so that it does exactly what I want, when I want it. My first attempt was installing ActiveWords, a program that recognizes keywords and uses those keywords to launch programs, open directories or files, or replace the typed text with a prechosen phrase. However, it was having problems recoginizing Firefox as my default browser, pretty much rendering it useless. And it hung in the background, slowing my computer down by logging every keystroke and trying to recognize my special words.

Luckily, I work with some people who are quite good at these things. Apparently, Windows has all kinds of built in functionality that has somehow escaped my knowledge. That's actually not surprising, because despite having used Windows for about 10 years, I've never felt the need to learn much about how anything worked. This has been a very successful defense against accidentally falling into a desktop support role at any of my jobs.

So thanks to my co-worker Will, I now know how to do scheduled tasks and customized keyboard shortcuts. I hit ctrl + alt + W and my five weather websites open up in tabs in Firefox. It rocks my world.