Author Archives: griffmiester

About griffmiester

Just a bloke from Ringwood, Victoria, Australia. I'm about to go back to Uni to study a masters, and thought I would blog the experience.

Lost the Product Key for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac?

Apple Microsoft 29 Comments

I was round at a friends place last night, delivering my old MacBook which I sold to them (after having it repaired). Of course I got roped into fixing the other problems that they were going through with their new Mac setup.

You know the usual in regards to changing from PC to Mac (they also got a new 20″ iMac), printer issues, Mail issues, etc.

Last thing that was going on as I was planning on leaving was that they were installing Adobe CS3 Design Standard (Academic) and Office 2008 for Mac (Home and Student Edition). And here came the problem…

Having just bought new equipment, there had been boxes everywhere, and a clean up had been done to cull all the boxes, and stuff that wasn’t needed anymore.  With all the stuff thrown out was the Jewel Case that the Office 2008 DVD had come with, and hence the Product Key. 🙁

I googled “recover product key from Office 2008 for mac” to see if the was software or a method for extracting the Product Key from the currently installed version, but all methods for doing that were Windows related, and useless for me. But the forth link turned up a forums post on macrumors.com that had the comment

“Simply copy the Microsoft Office 2004 (or whatever version you have) folder in Applications to the new Mac’s Applications folder. No need for anything else. :)” find it here. 

Really…. That can’t possibly work… This is Microsoft your talking about… The company that forces you to phone someone to update your product key for windows if you change your hardware too much.

Well, I decided that It wouldn’t hurt to try, plenty of space on the HDD, and I wasn’t doing anything else. So I copied the Microsoft Office 2008 folder from the Applications folder on the iMac to the Applications folder on the MacBook.  15mins later….

I tried opening Word on the MacBook, and it was happy as Larry. So I tried to do a Check for Updates, and that failed. Came up with a message telling me to reinstall Office. So I inserted the DVD and ran the Setup program.

“A previous Installation of Office 2008 with Product Key …. has been found… Continue Installation?”

Yep.

Took 20mins to run the Install Program, and it automatically ran the Auto Updater Program.

All working Fine.

So to Sum up;

  • You’ve lost your legitimate product key and have Office installed on another computer already
  • Copy the Office folder from the Applications Folder from existing Computer to the New Computer
  • Insert the Install DVD in the New Computer
  • Run the Installer
  • Let Auto Updater do it’s thing
  • SWEET

As far as I know this process works with the previous versions of Office for Mac also.

Microsoft Copy Security for Mac = FAIL

My New Threadless Tee’s – Part 2

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What's this at my front door?

And I arrived home to find the second part of my order.

Yeah!!!! More Threadless Tee’s.

How did I celebrate the find? Actually I can’t remember, but I did open the bag, checked to make sure all the Tee’s I’d ordered were in there (and some bonus stickers) and danced around with joy.

Now I wont have to buy another Tee Shirt until 2010.

 

You’ll notice that I said “wont have to”. That doesn’t mean that it wont happen. 😉

My New Threadless Tee’s – Part 1

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Over the Easter weekend Threadless had a US$9 sale of their Tee’s, and I got sucked in. :)

I had been looking to get one of their Tee’s for a friend for his Birthday, and this gave me the perfect excuse. Which Tee you may ask??? (or may not) He’s a Geologist, so it made sense to get him their Tee called Geology. So that was cool, but I couldn’t order only one… It just wouldn’t be worth it. So I ended up ordering another 5 Tee’s for myself.

Great, I’m really happy with that, and they should turn up in about 2-3 weeks. (END 17th March 2008)

The Sale still goes on, cos of some glitches on the, and then what happens?!?!? They decide to reprint one of my favorite Threadless Shirts that’s been out of print for Ages… Which Shirt? Sublimi’mAwesomeinal :)

I had to get it… I’d been hanging out to get it ever since I first saw it (and it was already sold out) and it was only US$10. So only 5 days after ordering some Tee’s.. I was at it again. So what did I get this time?

Also another 2-3 Weeks away.

So today, as I was leaving the house, the Postie comes by with my snail mail (just bills). Then she doubles back and hands me the “you have to collect a parcel” slip that she forgot to give me with my other mail.

w00t!

Off to the Post Office to get my Parcel.

My related tweets…

  • Package waiting collection notice. I can haz threadless? 9:39am AEST
  • Wow. 30 odd people queued up at the post office.9:47am AEST
  • Only 10 people in front of of. 9:51am AEST
  • w00t!! I can haz threadless!! 😀 9:59am AEST

and also

And now I’m wandering around Uni wearing my New “Put The Needle On The Record” Tee. :D

Brazilian Chocolate Pudding

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This recipe is one that I grew up with at home. I have bragged about this recipe to different people, so I only thought it would be fair if I Provided it to all and sundry, so that they can test it… and agree with me. 😉

Brazilian Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup self raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa
1/2 cup milk
60g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Topping
1 1/2 cups boiling water (if too dry increase amount of water next time)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa
2 heaped teaspoon of instant coffee

Method

  • Sift sugar, flour and cocoa into a bowl.
  • Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter melts.
  • Add the vanilla to the butter.
  • Add the liquid ingredients to the sifted dry ingredients.
  • Beat well for 1-2 minutes or until light and smooth.
  • Pour into a greased baking dish (good size is 6″ x 10″ = 15cm x 25cm)

Topping

  • Mix sugar, cocoa and coffee granules in a bowl and sprinkle on top.
  • Gently pour the boiling water over the top.
  • Bake in a moderate oven for approx 40 minutes.

Can be cooked in a microwave for 12 minutes on high if short of time but tastes better baked in the oven.
A compromise between th two cooking methods can be 6 minutes in the microwave followed by 20 minutes in a moderate oven.

Serving Size: Feeds 4-6 Adults = 1 Teenage Boy!
Other Notes: Recipe can be doubled for a crowd (but use a little less water) and takes a little longer to cook.

 

The LaCie HDD Sage – Le Fin

Hardware 1 Comment

I’ve now got 2x 300Gb Maxtor HDD’s in my LaCie Drive. They took about 2 days to do the "7-Pass Erase"… Nothing’s gone bad so far.

😐 I have had 1 issue though.  I came back to my PowerBook at one point, and tried to access something on the drive, and it said that it was disconnected.

It seems to be all good now though after a restart…. I’m not sure the +35C days have helped either. It’s all now just a waiting game to see if it fails again… I sure hope not.

Maybe I should setup a RAID 5 or 6  NAS.

Monx on Burwood Road

Food Review Uni 1 Comment

Well, I have some time to kill, so I’ve dropped into Monx to see what it’s like. First thing I found out was that I can’t get a student priced coffee until next week. The are waiting on a deal from their coffee supplier to bring it in.

First Coffee at MonxIt only cost $3 for a coffee, which isn’t to bad round here, but I’ll be interested to see what the student pricing will be like. *UPDATE* the student price for a coffee is a reasonable $2.50. The coffee wasn’t too bad either, I’ve had worse from Haddons, as good from HQ, as good from Mario’s… I’ll just have to see how it pans out.

The other cool thing about this cafe (as anyone that used to go to Ruby’s would know) is that I can access the Swinburne Uni WiFi, so I can type this up while siting on the couch.

Ahhh Uni life… 😉

Changing ISP’s – Part ][

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Well, Stage ][ of changing ISP’s is under way.

I was wanting to port my home phone number across, and start over with Telstra (boo, hiss) as my Home phone… But, after being told that it was going to be a 2 month wait for Telstra to get the Block of Numbers that had my old home phone number in it ported across, sort of left me thinking… Nup. I’m not paying for another 2 months of connection with Letsgo.com.au. I mean would you pay an extra $40 a month to get the not quite same (no free local calls per month) service you’ve been getting for the last year. I didn’t think so.So this morning I took time off work, so I could be home during the 4 hours (from 8:00am till 12:00pm) when the Telstra Technician might turn up. He did turn up at 11:00am (only a 3 hour wait), and then it was all don and sorted within 15 mins.

My next issue is that I need to wait for Telstra to update their database to show that my new number is activated, and then I can contact an ISP about getting ADSL2+ reconnected…And there goes another week in the life of my home Internet account.  Well except for using my measly 20mb per month on my Mobile phone plan (which I’m stuck on for another ~16 months)*Sigh*

Changing ISP’s

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I must say that when I bought my house, and got a phone-line and Internet a year ago, I never thought it would be this much trouble to change things over.

Here’s the ongoing saga.

When I first got my place, one of the first things I did was to try and find an ISP. I searched around using http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ to see what was available on my exchange, and what was the best deal for me.

To cut a long story short, I went with http://letsgo.com.au/ cos they had a bundled deal (phone and ADSL2+) with a generous 60gb download limit, and no metered uploads and for only $70/month. There were a couple of issues with getting it connected up, but I’m not going into that here. The only thing to comment on with all that was that the Customer Service (while not perfect) was pretty good, and though they were in WA with their time difference, I was talking to actual Aussies.

FF to last week.

On Friday 1st Feb I was logging into the Letsgo members website, to check to see if I had been unshaped, and noticed that the pricing structure had changed, and I had an email telling me that my contract was finishing on Mon 4th Feb.  With the New pricing, I was going to have to pay $40 MORE per month for the service I was already getting, and they were going to change to a on/off-peak structure.

Time to jump ship.

I’ve looked around, and no one offers a bundle deal where the phone price is included in the Internet price. So I ended up concluding that getting a Telstra line, and then getting Internet with TPG’s ADSL2+ Super 2 deal was going to be my best option.

I called TPG to see if I could get their plan installed… I was just trying to do it as a fact finding call.  I was told that they couldn’t tell me, because my phone number couldn’t be confirmed on a Telstra Exchange (that’s what comes with getting a bundled phone from a small ISP in WA). I asked if they could provide me any information, based on my Neighbour’s phone number. Nup. Not a chance… That means I can’t even find out if I can get an account with them until I have changed over to having a Telstra Phone Line.

Next Problem.

I called Telstra to find out about porting my number over to them. The first guy I spoke to didn’t have too much of a clue, and had to keep putting me on hold, so that he could ask someone else. Eventually I was asked if they could give me a call back, to save me my time and phone call.

2.5 Hours later I still hadn’t heard anything, so I tried again.  The Lady who answered was very helpful and knowledgeable. this still was a 47 minute call.  Part of the reason it was so long, was cos I needed to get an account number from Letsgo so that Telstra could process the Porting of the phone number. This was further exacerbated by the Indian Call Centre that couldn’t understand what my username for my account was. Got it all sorted, and then arranged to get my number ported.

Oh, By the way, the earliest that Telstra will even contact me about changing the number is the 19th Feb (there’s a 10Business Day Cooling off Period), and then the next available date in the calendar isn’t until 29th Feb… 🙁

This whole process takes much longer than I would like.

Will let you know when I’m further down this slippery slope.

Hello world!

Uncategorized 1 Comment

Welcome to my new WordPress blog.  I’ve just created this, and my plan is to blog my experience of going back to Uni to study a Masters….  When I say “plan”, that’s a very loose usage of the word.

“A plan is a proposed or intended method of getting from one set of circumstances to another. They are often used to move from the present situation, towards the achievement of one or more objectives or goals.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan