Get Rid of "SafeNet Sentinel" Folder (or any folder!) in My Documents

One of my pet peeves is programs that decide to do something to your computer without asking you. In general, it the the lowly, defenseless "My Documents" folder that bears the brunt of this manipulation. While many of us try endlessly to maintain a clean and organized documents folder, we have to contend with many programs that insist on creating their very own folder. It's like if every house guest you had over just took over a couple of drawers in your bedroom!

Many programs do allow you to change the location of these folders once they're installed, and still others will allow manual relocation of these folders (but will often throw up an error and require you to gently direct them towards their stash of data like a confused kitten).

There are some programs, however, that insist on creating a folder somewhere no matter what you tell them! Here is my solution:

Open Notepad, create a new documents and type the following lines:
cd "C:\Users\[your username]\Documents\"
rd "SafeNet Sentinel" /s /q

Save it as "Remove Annoyance.bat" (you can name it whatever you want, but you MUST include the .bat extension. Make sure to put your username in the first line and, if you're getting rid of some other folder, put it's name in the second line where I have "SafeNet Sentinel".

WARNING:
This command will delete the entire contents of the folder you specify. Don't do this unless you're sure the folder is useless.

Now, in your start menu type "Task Scheduler" and run the program. Click "Create Basic Task" on the right hand side. Name it, set it to run on startup or daily, set the action to "Start a Program" and then find your .bat file and set it as the program to be run. Once you finish setup, you're good.

If you move the .bat file, this will no longer work. Make sure the file is somewhere convenient before you setup the task scheduler.

Middle Mouse Button Woes

Recently I had to use some software (specifically, UCSF Chimera, but this solution should be relevant to any program) that makes extensive use of the middle mouse button. For those of us with a mouse, this presents no problem.

For some people (trackpad users and those owning mice that utilize unusual drivers) the middle mouse button may be fairly elusive. If you require a middle mouse button, I highly recommend getting a standalone mouse (or replacing the one you have that isn't working correctly). In the meantime, use this workaround:

Requirements:
Windows laptop with touchpad and Synaptics Touchpad Driver

Go to your control panel and find your mouse settings. It should be a window with multiple tabs like "buttons", "pointers" and "pointer options". The last tab should have a red icon and say "device settings".

Go to the device settings tab and hit the "settings" button. Go to the menu called "tapping" and enable "tap zones" by clicking on the words "tap zones" and checking the box. Now, pick the area of the touchpad that you'd like to act as your middle mouse button (I prefer the bottom left). Once you click it, there should be a list of actions that tapping the specified area will perform. Select "middle mouse button" and hit OK. If the options on this menu are gray, it's because you didn't enable Tap Zones.

Now you've got a makeshift middle mouse button.