Mass Effect: volume issues

Problem: The ambient sounds in Mass Effect are very loud compared to the dialog, even when set to low values
Solution: Switch to "software sound" from "hardware sound". Now the volume sliders work and you can adjust the different sound components as you desire.

Paste html table into excel

From a hint in the comments on this thread.

1. View page source
2. Copy table source, starting with the <table> tag
3. "Paste special" into excel as "text"

Time Machine over a network

From http://imulus.com/blog/george/software/using-leopard-time-machine-to-backup-of-a-network/

1. Open a terminal window and type
   defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
2. Mount the relevant volume using Finder
3. The backup volume will now show up on Time Machine and can be used for a backup.

Verizon is blocking port 25 - check your email clients

Verizon is blocking outgoing port 25 (often used as default for smpt outgoing email).

This will manifest as a strange problem of Thunderbird or other email client being unable to send messages but receiving them just fine when you are at home, and showing no symptoms when you are at work (if they don't have Verizon at work).

To rectify this simply change the port on the outgoing server to 587.

Of course, what happens when spammers start to use port 587?

Further reading here.