• Purchased product from Newegg.com – December 5, 2011 [0 days]
• Registered rebate with Patriot – December 27, 2011 [22 days]
• Received notification that claim was received – January 12, 2012 [16 days]
• Received notification that rebate was processed – January 16, 2012 [4 days]
• Receive $30 prepaid American Express card in the mail – Pending – ETA 8 to 10 weeks.

Solution: RTFM. Page 9 of the a885gm-a2 motherboard manual spelled it out in plain English. In order to wake on USB, the USBPWR jumper must be set to 2-3, rather than 1-2 (default). This sets the voltage to 5VSB, rather than VCC. Apparently, this is absolutely necessary for wake on USB.

The hardest part of this fix was grabbing the jumper with my fingers without disassembling anything. Note to self: next time, set jumpers on mobo before putting it all together.

Red herrings: Two days of googling led me to disable hybrid sleep, tweak settings in device manager, and some other non-helpful fiddlings in Power Options.

How to Add Automatic BCC in Outlook 2010

Step 1 – Show the Developer Tab

In Microsoft Outlook 2010, click File > Options > Customize Ribbon. In the right-hand list, look for Developer and check it. Click OK.

Step 2 – Open ThisOutlookSession in VB Editor

Return to the main Outlook window. Click the Developer tab and choose Visual Basic. Expand Project1(VbaProject.OTM) and click the plus sign by Microsoft Outlook Objects. Next, double-clikc the ThisOutlookSession item.

Step 3 – Pasting in the Code

In the drop-down menu, change it from General to Application. In the other drop-down menu, choose ItemSend. Copy and paste the following code between the two existing lines of code:

Dim objRecip As Recipient
Dim strMsg As String
Dim res As Integer
Dim strBcc As String
On Error Resume Next
' #### USER OPTIONS ####
' address for Bcc -- must be SMTP address or resolvable
' to a name in the address book
strBcc = "SomeEmailAddress@domain.com"
Set objRecip = Item.Recipients.Add(strBcc)
objRecip.Type = olBCC
If Not objRecip.Resolve Then
strMsg = "Could not resolve the Bcc recipient. " & _
"Do you want still to send the message?"
res = MsgBox(strMsg, vbYesNo + vbDefaultButton1, _
"Could Not Resolve Bcc Recipient")
If res = vbNo Then
Cancel = True
End If
End If
Set objRecip = Nothing

Step 4 – Customizing the Code

Look for the section that reads strBcc = SomeEmailAddress@domain.com and swap out the fake email address for the email address you want to BCC. Save the changes in the VB editor and restart Outlook.

That’s it! Now, the next time you launch Outlook you’ll get a security warning asking you to Enable Macros after you add this script. To get rid of this nag screen, go to Developer > Macro Security  and choose Enable All Macros. Beware, though, that this will allow potentially dangerous code to run. You may just want to put up with the nag screen instead.

2. But then again, that is what is sad about global connectivity. I’m thinking of Fiddler on the Roof, when all the denizens of Anatevka gathered into Motel’s house to gawk at his sewing machine. There must’ve been hundreds of thousands of sowing machines across the globe in the early 20th century, but there was only one, just one in Anatevka. And Motel had it.

3.

1. Get that pen moving. My stupid mind is a glacier and it’s moving nowhere fast. I mean, it’s boulder and it’s collecting moss. I mean, it’s been so long, I’ve completely lost moment.

2. I hate when people reference their own minds. I read someone’s profile once that mentioned that they had been using art to explore their own mind. Silly. I want to believe that I’m not that self-centered. But in reality, I am. I just need to untrain myself from being like that. Because everyone is self centered. And the only way I can get people to listen to me is to talk about them, not me.

3. We really only read things that are about us. With so much to choose from, why bother reading anything else? I’m thinking of the murder of Lindsay C. It was a post-modern murder – a young engaged couple killed by a psychopath who hated what they stood for (conjugation prior to wedlock) rather than who they were. Decades later, the authorities pinned the crime on some other man who, while very likely not the man who killed the girl, was guilty of another murder with the same apparent motive. The persecution was mostly for the parents, who themselves must have known that the connection between this man and the murder of their daughter was tenuous at best. But in some way, they could feel that justice had been served. Types of people criminals to avenge types of victims. In some cosmic, karmic way, it must all even out in the end, right?

4. 9/11 was supposed to be the end of post-modern politics. I’m not qualified to discuss this any further, really.

5. I find myself caring the most about things that do not have a direct effect on my life. It’s silly, really, but I think it is a symptom of human boring. What was perhaps once an engine of social betterment (back when we relied on community for survival) is now merely a diversion. It’s a way to feel connected to the outside world, to put a plot and context to the bottomless pit of chaotic information, stories, ideas. So many people live their lives without picking up a paper, it’s proof that we do not need it for survival. Those who do follow it follow it as a soap opera. Who is the man who lives in a house you’ve never seen and shakes hands with costumed figures from across the sea you’ve never traversed? Why does it matter if he shakes his hand or pukes in his lap? To you, who lives in a two bedroom house on some street that’s technically in the city but on the wrong side of the tunnel, very little. The bombs aren’t falling your backyard and the death panels aren’t reviewing your case. If you can live and die without knowing it, then it’s nothing. It’s drama, and nothing else.

6. Or is it? I consider, sometimes, the prudence of taking a great interest in something like oxygen. Or water. Why is there not a periodical called simply “Sustenance.” How about a quarterly review called “Food and Shelter.” These are not topics that demand careful study. But how vital they are…

7. Survival, sadly, is one of the most effortless endeavors to which man is subjected. I mean man, as in mankind, as in humankind, by the way. So much so that ceasing to survive is something that we very often need assistance to achieve. Or, at least, an abnormally hearty resolve and a talent for getting things done. That the word “attempted” is bandied about so often is proof that existence is a default position difficult to alter.

8. Wife just called on the phone (from upstairs) to ask me if I had bought a Powerball ticket tonight. She was perhaps inordinately disappointed that I had not. “What if tonight was the night we won?” It seems absurd, but it’s hard not to feel this way about everything. I have thousands of dollars that could readily be liquidated and converted into lottery tickets right now. What if one of those would have been the winning ticket? It’s hard not to feel that kind of regret with every single passing second.

9. Yet still, movies like Donnie Darko distress me. How can there be infinite parallel universes? There can’t be. The system would get overloaded at some point and things would just grind to a halt, right?

10. Sometimes, a deeper understanding of technology and science has a limiting effect on the imagination. This is unrelated, but I’m reading The Shock Doctrine and I’m in the first section where they talk about sensory deprivation. These patients, they’re robbed of their memories. Then all external stimuli is muted. And then, they hear things. They’re fed ideas from a tape recorder and their minds grab it and run with it. In the void, their imagination runs wild. I guess it’s no different, really, than being afraid of the dark. How infinite is abject mystery…

11. I actually do write a lot. I write a lot of words. Everyday I write thousands of words. Now, if I could only make all those words on the same topic and in the same Word document, then I’d have a book. Shit.

2. Whether you are a morning person -a “lark” – or a night person – an “owl” – is called your chronotype. Humans are supposed to be diurnal. That is, active during the day and asleep at night. But as life would have it, that is simply not so for a goodly chunk of humanity. It has to do with work, where the midsection of society operates between 9 and 5 and the unemployed, the students, the teenagers, the vagabonds, the criminals and the shiftworkers are buzzing and busy in the night-clad hours.

3. Your activity-rest patterns are meant to be controlled by circadian rhythms. From Latin, that is circa, meaning “around” and diem, as in “day.” This is the unit by which we measure our lives. Day by day. For the most of us, a day consists of an alarm clock, a shower and a shave, a commute, eight or so hours of Productivity, another commute, a period of unwinding and then bed.

4. In technical literature, though, the word “day” is avoided. Instead, they use the word nychthemeron, which, in usage, means any consecutive period of 24 hours. This is because to some, a day is not always 24 hours. My dog, for example, falls asleep anywhere between 10 and 20 times a day. For him, I imagine, each time he wakes up and there is a fresh dish of food in front of him, it is a new day.

5. Nychthemeron, though, from Greek, is nykt and hemera. Nyx, the primordial goddess of the night. Hemera, the goddess of the daytime. Night and Day, being twin forces that should rule us – much like our circadian rhythms.

6. A “persisting or repeating mismatch between a person’s sleep-wake pattern and the sleep-wake demands of that patient’s environment” is called a circadian rhythm sleep disorder. It is a failure to be ruled by the body’s clock. This is only diagnosed, though, when it disallows a person to integrate into society. The person is awake while the rest of the world is sleeping and asleep when the rest of the world is awake.

7. In a sense, anyone who falls out of step with the march of society is disordered. Of course, we only deem it as such when the results are detrimental. A man who cannot rise from his bed to take out his trash. A woman who cannot hold down a steady job or boyfriend. A child who eats and eats and eats and is mercilessly mocked on the bus. These outliers are starkly different than those that rise above, meteorically. The self-made millionaires, the violin virtuosos, those that tirelessly work, work, work and achieve in spades.

8. Depression, curiously, can be treated by sleep deprivation. About two-thirds of the sleep deprived show immediate recovery from depression. However, the affliction returns upon falling asleep. However, the effect is more commonly pronounced in those with eveningness preference to their circadian rhythms. The owls, forced to stay awake during the day.

9. They’ve developed medications that mute the REM cycle. That is, the period of sleep when we dream. So, perhaps, it is not sleep deprivation that cures depression, but rather dream deprivation.

10. Dreaming – that nonsensical jacuzzi of floating thoughts, emotions and anxieties, a gallimaufry of loose ends and broken narratives that, during that period of unconsciousness, are accepted without explanation. We are rarely confused in our dreams. We occupy a different realm of meaningfulness. A cock-eyed man with scissors for legs can very well be our best friend. A flashing cube, the distillation of all our pulsing fears. We fly, we make love, we eat, we sink knee deep into the carpet and there is no sense of dissonance. No sense of incredulity or wrongness. A little vacation from the oppression of reality.

11. We take so many pictures on vacations, buy so many souvenirs, write so many memoirs and diaries. Because, flying forward in time, nodding off at wheels up and waking up in Phoenix or Atlanta or some other airline hub, we already begin to forget. Our consciousness returns to normal wakefulness – the clocks on our cell phones automatically re-synch to local towers and by Monday, we are filling our cups with coffee as if nothing ever happened.

1. Whenever I see a dead animal on the side of the road, I’m never sure how to feel. Repulsed? Remorseful? I remember once, on his way to some party, a friend showed up very, very late. It was because, he explained, he saw a wounded cat in the road and he felt so angry that no one had stopped to help it. He had pulled over, picked the thing up (“He was so scared, it was terrible”) and took it to the vet. I don’t think I could ever do something like that – especially if the creature was in very bad shape. I don’t think I could feel the blood on my hands, in spite of the context.

2. I’ve been imagining some “in the near future” story where only the very, very wealthy drive. And road kill is as often comprised of human collateral damage as animal. And how you would kind of get desensitized to it after awhile. And how that, even though you weren’t the car to hit someone/something, you were somehow guilty for simply being part of the flow of traffic.

3. I knew a girl who would tell a story of how, one morning, she found a dead naked woman laying in her driveway. She touched… Nevermind.

4. Once, in the Strip District, there was a groundhog, its two back legs obviously broken, and it was scrambling frantically across the center line. Out of instinct(?), I swerved to straddle it, but looking back, I don’t know why. I should’ve swerved to hit it. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the car behind me swerve as well, and that’s what I hoped he was doing. This, most of us agree, is the humane thing to do. This is why we shoot horses, right? This is why our dogs never die of old age. Euthanasia at 55 miles per hour – just part of the daily commute.

5. A friend of mine, now a vegan, was dating, or maybe just hanging around with, some kind of guy who would drive on country roads, speed up and swerve into the shoulder to hit the possums, hooting and yeehawing all the while.

6. Some of my friends, went “cooning.” That is, they drove through the country, shining their headlights into the eyes of a raccoon (blinding them) and then descended upon it with golf clubs.

7. Once, someone got into his car to discover a dead raccoon, seat-belted into the passenger seat, possibly wearing a baseball cap or a t-shirt.

8.  I came home one Saturday to find a bird on its back on my doorstep, glaring at me over his heaving chest. I  got a pair of gardening gloves and a cardboard box, not really knowing what I intended to do with the latter. I picked him up and he flailed out of my hands, landing upright in the grass and hopping away into my neighbor’s yard, where he was no longer my problem.

9. Wednesday, when mowing my backyard, the mower kicks and spits out some black feathers. A dry, rotten smell hits me and I suddenly feel very sick.

1. Working at McDonald’s, midway through a nine hour shift, and suddenly the pie oven goes off and it sounds just like an alarm clock.

2. Standing outside, early in the morning, waiting for the dog to “do his business” (he’s in junk bonds) and I hear something vibrating and I get tense, ready to confront whoever is demanding my attention, before I realize that it’s nothing but a distant chainsaw.

3. Trains, riding their brakes through an empty intersection, make me think of whales singing.

4. A garbage truck, backing into the alley – its communication is subvocal, our response, Pavlovian.

5. Music, too, is vibrations.

6. Whenever I’m standing in front of a speaker at a concert, and the bass is rattling my chest, it makes me think of CPR – a thousand people, their hearts all beating in sync.

7. I like hearing babies wail in a public place. The harder they cry, the better it feels. It feels oddly indulgent – ignoring a call to action with impunity.

8. There are, really, only 11 tones you can play on an instrument. But people cheer when you hit the really, really blue ones. It’s like scratching an itch.

9. Walking down the street, during what I assume is a normal day, and I hear a faint, dissonant chime. I brace myself for a return to reality.