How to fix a broken Windows 10 start menu

Last year, the start menu on my Windows 10 user account stopped working. When I'd press the Windows button, nothing would happen. There were also issue with a few buttons on the taskbar. Some of them didn't have an icon and when you pressed them, they did nothing. After much searching and frustration, I found out that the TileDataLayer directory under my account may have been corrupted. Unfortunately, I didn't find any tool to fix that or even determine with some certainty that this was the issue. However at this point, I didn't have much to lose, so I went ahead and reset it manually.

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How I setup vim

Screenshot of GVIM on WINDOWS.

Screenshot of GVIM on WINDOWS.

My favorite editor on devices where I have a real keyboard is called vim. I use it when writing just about any text document or source code file because it has commands where you can do most things with a few keystrokes. For example, if I want to properly indent my whole source file I just type ggVG=. You wouldn't think that would come up often, but when you work with many developers you use commands like that a lot. Anyway, I have created quite a few support files for my personal vim environment. Just recently, I put them into a mercurial repository and put that repository up on bitbucket. This post explains how to clone the repository and to set it up for your own use. The steps below assume that you have vim and mercurial installed and they are setup in the PATH. The optional steps below assume that you also have git and curl installed and they are setup in the PATH.

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How I deal with constant interruption at work

Back in late 2013, my group at work was moved to a new location in another building. This new location has more space so we could all be in one place. Unfortunately, with us all being together in one place, the amount of interruption that happens now is at an all time high. Each one of these interruptions by themselves isn't a big deal, but when you take them all together, it ends up being a lot of lost productivity. Here is how I deal with each type of interruption.

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Welcome to Torrin's World

Welcome to my world! Even though, I've held on to this vanity domain for almost 15 years without doing anything special with it, I've actually published blogs in several different places such as wordpress.com and tumblr.com. The great thing about publishing in those places are that you don't have to worry about managing a domain or updating software. The bad thing is you have to deal with their terms of service. I've seen blogs just disappear (without a trace) before. So, I've finally decided that it was time to have my own name and my own voice on the internet. This blog will be about issues that I've had and how I solved the issue.