Tech-n-ology

Great Time Saving Tool

2011-06-13T07:30:00-07:00

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For a short time, now, I've been using Evernote to keep track of ideas for blog posts to write. I have found it very handy and easy to use. You may be thinking something like, "If you're using that tool for blog ideas, why haven't you posted anything in...like...forever!?" Good question.

Actually, I have been writing...just on my main blog. On the technology side of things, I just haven't had a lot of stuff come my way that seemed like it would be useful to write a post about. That is, until now...

Back to Evernote. While I have been using it for a while, I have not really taken the time to really get into the finer details of what you can do with it.

Thankfully, Craig Jarrow, the Time Management Ninja, has. And he has posted a very interesting list of ways that you can take advantage of Evernote for quite a number of different things. While it is certainly not an exhaustive list of what Evernote can do and how it can be used, it certainly opens up the doors for ideas on how to use it in a variety of situations.

Enjoy!

Windows Services Stuck in “Starting” Status

2011-04-07T08:00:00-07:00

If only this could have pertained to Suse Linux that title would have been almost completely alliterated. I can picture it now…”Suse Services Stuck in Starting Status.” Say that one five times fast. But, alas, it is not Suse Linux, it’s the wonderful world of Windows. (See? I still got a little of the alliteration going.)

Enough of that, however. You are likely more interested in how to resolve this issue than seeing how witty I can be. If you have found this post because you are looking for a way to resolve this, my guess is that you have at least one computer that is having this problem right now and you need a solution.

While I have seen a number of sites that offer some possible solutions to this problem, I think I can offer you a scenario that I have been unable to find anywhere else. Before I get to that, let me re-iterate some of the more common solutions and hopefully that will be sufficient to get you up and running again.

Scenario #1: Service uses specific unique executable program

In this scenario, you have a program that runs as a service and this program has a specific name that it runs as. For example, I am fairly certain that every PC in the free world is now required to have iTunes installed on it. Along with the iTunes installation, you get a program called iPodService.exe which runs as a Service. If you open your Computer Management screen and look at your Services, you will see the “iPod Service” in that list. The Status is probably “Started” and the Startup Type is most likely “Manual.”

Now, I’m not going to get into detail about what those mean. For now, I just want to make sure you can identify the service we are talking about.

Let’s say, for our example, however, that the Status is not “Started” but instead it is “Starting” and it just stays in that status for a long time. If this happens, you may not be able to sync your iPod or iPad device and will likely begin to get frustrated. That is understandable with such mission-critical apps as this.

While there is a chance that this could be because the iPodService.exe program is corrupted somehow, let’s just assume for our scenario that there was a simple hiccup and it just needs to be stopped and restarted. When you try to stop the service, that option is not available because the status has to be “Started” in order to stop it.

In this case, you can simply kill the program directly in one of two ways. If you live and breath with the mouse, you can kill it with Task Manager:

Open Task Manager
Change to the Processes tab
Locate the iPodService.exe process
Right-click on that process
Select End Process from the context menu

Voila! The process should end. I say “should” because usually that will work just fine. However, if that does not work and/or you just love using the command prompt because you are an old-school geek (like me), you can run the following from the DOS command prompt:

taskkill /f /im iPodService.exe

This will force the process to close and then you can restart the service. As long as the program is not corrupt, it should start up just fine, though the problem may be that another required service is missing, corrupt, or simply not running. Let’s assume, for the sake of this example, that it starts up just fine at this point.

On to the next scenario…

Scenario #2: Service is running under the svchost.exe as a parameter

This one gets a bit trickier, but as you will see…not that much. This main difference is that when you look in Task Manager at the processes, you will see a bunch of processes called svchost.exe. Now, how the heck do you know which one controls which service? It’s probably not a good idea to just guess.

Unfortunately, this fun little helpful hint will not work in Windows XP or earlier. I think it’s in Vista and I know for sure it’s in Windows 7, though.

If you have this issue and want to make sure you are killing the correct process, you can still use Task Manager. In Task Manager for Windows 7, there is a tab called “Services” which shows you all your services, their status, etc. Once you find the service you need to end (and verify that it is still in a “Starting” status) you can right-click on the service and select “Go to Process” from the context menu.

At this point, I recommend making note of some information. Before you try ending the process as described above in scenario #1 (now that you have found the right one), you will want to be sure to note the process ID (PID). That will be important if trying to end the process through Task Manager doesn’t work.

If that is the case, and it won’t end that way, you will have to resort to the TASKKILL command just like above, but with one slight variation. Since they use the same svchost.exe program, you can’t kill it the same way or you may kill the wrong svchost.exe Fortunately, however, TASKKILL is a bit more flexible than that and you can use not only the name of the program, but you can refer to the PID, instead. (Hence the reason for noting that above.)

In this case, let’s say that PID was 3724. You would type the following at a command prompt:

taskkill /f /pid 3724

That should end that process for you. From here, as before, you can now work on troubleshooting why the service failed or continues to fail, etc. But that is a discussion for another time and at another place. For now, my work here is done.

Are there any other scenarios that do not fall into either of these that I have illustrated? Please let me know and I will try to include them.

Happy computing.

Send RSS Feed to Facebook Groups

2011-03-01T06:00:00-08:00

I recently searched out how to set up a Facebook group so that you could have it automatically populated with content from an RSS feed. After searching for quite a while, I found lots of discussion groups, blogs and forums full of people asking the same question. Now, I have good news…

You can do it!

There is a Facebook application out there now that actually allows you to do this. I installed and configured the app several days ago, but I had to wait until the new post I wrote appeared on my group. What’s nice is that it makes it appear as though it was posted not only to the group, but by the group.

If you created a Facebook group and want to send RSS feeds to it in order to share it with other group members, look for the Facebook app called RSS Graffiti. There are a few cool things about this app.

First, you can direct multiple RSS feeds to your group. It will give you a preview of what it will look like when it posts. There are also a couple of options of how much of the content you want to appear. You can even control how often the RSS feed is checked for new posts! As if that weren’t enough, you can link up your Twitter account to it as well.

You can set up feeds to go to a group or to your own wall. If you are a member of multiple groups, you can set different feeds to go to different groups. There’s a whole bunch you can do with this app.

Now, admittedly, though I had connected my Twitter account with this, I did not see a Twitter update regarding the post. It appeared on the wall of my group, but not on Twitter. If the feed belongs to you, no worries…you can probably set up your feed to update Twitter for you (I know Feedburner does that).

I’m still planning on fiddling with that feature a bit. But, for now, I’m quite happy that it’s posting my feed to the wall of my group.

Surface 2.0

2011-01-11T06:00:00-08:00

I don’t feel the least little bit of hesitation saying the I love my iPad. I still think that it’s just about the coolest thing since the USB thumb drive. My Droid X is pretty cool, too. It does some really cool things and, even though these cool things drain the battery pretty quickly, I still like it.

The Microsoft answer to touch-screen technology like iPads and such is called the Surface. They recently released the latest version of this technology. While Surface is not in the price range to make it a household item like Droids or iPads or some of these other hand-held technologies, it is still a really cool device.

Unlike the hand-held devices, Microsoft Surface tends to be more of a table-top or even wall-mounted device. After all, if you watch the video introducing the Surface, they are using a Samsung 40” HD screen. Not exactly something you can tuck under your arm and carry around with you.

There are several different case studies showing how various places are using the Surface. You can see short videos from places like the Manchester Visitors Center, Hard Rock Cafe, the hotel Rio’s iBar, Sheraton Hotels and even on the popular entertainment news show, Extra.

Random Text

2010-12-29T06:00:00-08:00

Have you ever needed to generate just a bunch of random text in Word? This may sound a little weird, but it can happen. Perhaps you’re working on a document template and you want to make sure the layout is going to look the way you want. Maybe you’re trying to troubleshoot a printer and just need a document with some text. Whatever the case, Microsoft has a nifty solution for you.

With Microsoft Word (I believe the feature was introduced in 2007) you an automatically generate a specified number of paragraphs using the RAND command. To use this command, wherever you want your random text inserted in your document, just type in the following:

=RAND()

Inside the parentheses, simply put the number of paragraphs you want to be generated. Keep in mind that the paragraphs will repeat after the third one. But, then, for most of the reasons I can think of to generate random text, you probably are less concerned with content than you are with not having to just type “kdkaldfj adkljfldkja dlkjflsjkd lkdjlkdf “ for several paragraphs (or..*yikes*…pages!).

I know that, for me, in the past I would type a bunch of junk like that until I had a couple lines, then I would copy it and paste a few more lines. Then I would copy the larger body of junk text and paste that. I’d keep doing that until I had enough text to do what I needed. This command sure will make that a whole lot easier. In about 2.4 seconds, I was able to generate almost two pages of random text using this command.

Read the full article on random text and feel free to share with us some of the neat little “hidden” or less-well-known features of the Microsoft Office apps.

IT Professional Community

2010-12-16T06:00:00-08:00

I’ve worked in IT for over 15 years. Some of the companies have had fewer than 100 employees and a single location. Others have had a handful of locations within a single state. Currently, I’m with a company that’s in over 20 states with over 800 separate locations that have technology that must be managed, supported, maintained, etc.

During this time, I have seen varying levels of maturity in the area of IT processes, tools, structure, etc. That has also led to a number of changes, not without some growing pains, as things grow and necessarily change processes, tools and structure in order to handle the increasing complexity and demand to support a larger technology infrastructure.

With so many projects to make changes and continue to grow and mature, one question has continued to come up over and over and over again…

“How do other companies do this?”

Whether you’re in a small company and you’re the only IT guy there or you’re in a company with 100,000 people in 10,000 locations around the world…there are other companies who have done or are doing what you’re trying to do. And with varying degrees of success and failure.

What if there were a place to connect with those other people so that you could find out how they’re doing things, what their experience has been like with a particular Help Desk application or server hardware? What if you could go somewhere to ask someone what the benefits and / or the drawbacks are to a particular type of data storage technology?

What about if you are provisioning new computer equipment and you’re tying to evaluate tools to automate this process in order to deliver faster, higher quality PC’s and laptops to your user community?Or, maybe you’re looking at adopting a new methodology such as ITIL or Sarbanes-Oxley, or ISO20000 and aren’t sure where to start, what questions to ask or what the differences are.

Whatever the case may be, many of us tend to be a bit skeptical of the promises made by the sales forces of the world who tend to overstate the features, benefits (and, sometimes, the quality) of the product that they are trying to convince you to buy. The problem is, you don’t always know which claims are overstated. So, who can you ask?

That is why I have created TECKI (Technical Experts Communicating Knowledge & Ideas). Yes, I do recognize that this is a totally cheesy name. That’s often a problem with technical people. Very left brained and logical. Not much happening in the right hemisphere where all the creativity takes place.

Now, this is a brand new forum, so I’m going to be asking that you be patient as it will obviously take time to gain enough members to really start being more useful. However, if you will register and tell other IT professions about it so that they can register, we can begin building this community and making it more useful.

So, for the first little while, I urge you to get the word out and to keep checking back on the forum. I expect that the initial growth will be a bit slow, but if you continue to check back there, eventually someone may post a question you can help them with and we can get the ball rolling.

Thanks for helping to make a resource for our IT community!

Wonder Wheel

2010-12-10T06:00:00-08:00

Sometimes, I wonder if it’s even possible for the folks at Google to come up with something cooler than what they’ve already done. These guys just seem to outdo themselves all the time with new tools and gadgets.

The latest one I came across is called the Wonder Wheel. This is such a great context sensitive, train of thought search tool! It’s almost too difficult to describe without showing you how it works. To that end, I’ll have to use some pictures to really do this justice.

So, let’s say that you are looking for something on the web, but you’re not quite sure exactly how you want to phrase your search. In our example, I’ll just use a single word: “psalms.” Let’s see how that works out for me.

From this screen, along the left side of the screen, select “More search tools” and then you should see the following list:

What you end up with is a diagram with your search phrase at the center and related items branching off the main topic. From there, you can follow the “legs” to related items or topics and continue following that chain as you drill down to the idea you are looking for.

Notice that it show’s the central hub for the previous items I’ve selected, so I can return back to a previous place simply by clicking on that hub or one if it’s visible branches. Also, to the right, you can see a list of links that Google has found related to whatever is your currently selected hub.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think this is just about the coolest thing since Google Voice! And that’s really saying something.

So, check out the Wonder Wheel and may it bring you to the information destination you are seeking to answer your questions, fulfill your searching desire and locate the content you are so desperately trying to find amongst the trillions of web pages out there.

Using Command Line Variables

2010-12-07T06:00:00-08:00

I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m a command line junky. I will default to opening up a command prompt faster than quad-core Xeon processor, 15K RPM hard drive and 8GB of RAM can open up Notepad. If nothing else, just that last sentence should be a pretty good indicator of just how geeky I can be.

Given my disposition toward scripting, automation and the command line interface it is actually pretty surprising, even to me, that I have not been more diligent about learning the Windows PowerShell. I remember when I first saw it listed as an update when I was installing patches and hot fixes and such. Yet, with all the excitement I had about it, I have not yet taken the time to learn much about it.

Once in a while, however, a piece of information about PowerShell just sort of falls into my lap. Today was no different. While going through the various Windows and Office blogs and such, I came across a post about a feature of PowerShell that could be quite useful…particularly for people as lazy as I am who don’t like to have to type more than necessary (not that anyone would ever guess that from how I write).

This post had to do with something called “automatic variables” that are used in the PowerShell environment. Specifically, it mentioned one particular automatic variable; the ‘$$’ variable. This rather cool variable keeps parameter information from the previously entered command so that you don’t have to re-type it.

To read more about this…and see an example to help better understand how you could use this, you can check out the original post.

Android and Lotus Notes

2010-11-24T06:00:00-08:00

For the most part, this post comes from a somewhat self-serving origin. You see, I’m currently using a Blackberry Curve and I recently checked to see when I was eligible for a phone upgrade and found that that would be…now. So, I wanted to look at moving to the Droid X.

In talking with our guys who handle the Blackberry and mobile device “stuff” I found that there are some issues with Lotus Notes Traveler and the Droid. Apparently, there was a recent patch that was supposed to address this, but didn’t work. So, I’m on hold.

Recently, I re-visited my search for answers as to when the IBMers would develop an update for Traveler to support the Droid platform. My search was fruitful. It seems that Ed Brill is confident that a soon-to-be-released update will resolve this problem and allow Droid users to access their e-mail, contacts and calendars through the Lotus Notes Traveler service.

Time will tell if this is actually the case, but it sounds like they were being more specific about targeting Droid users, so the confidence level is a bit higher at this point. Since it seems to be a big issue for many people, what with Droids gaining so much ground in the mobile market, I thought I’d make mention of this news to help fan the flames of hope for Android users the world over.

If I find out anything with even more certainty, I’ll be sure to post it as soon as I can. Keep your fingers crossed and your hopes up! Looks like Android users are going to have a happy Christmas!

E-Mail Signatures

2010-11-16T07:00:00-08:00

Have you ever noticed when some people actually “sign” their e-mails at the end of their message…right before their signature? It often surprises me that people would do that, no matter how often I see it. I mean, in most e-mail programs, it shows your signature at the bottom of your e-mail while you’re typing it. So it’s not like you can say that you forgot it already put it there.

Most people’s e-mail signature consists of the same seven pieces of information. Sometimes it’s only four. Others have as many as seven or eight lines and maybe even a graphic in their signatures. But here are the standard things I see in most e-mail signatures:

Name
Company
Title
E-Mail address
Phone number
FAX number
Website address

It is also not uncommon to close an e-mail with a pithy comment or quote that will hopefully signify to your recipients what a clever person you are. But, in the interest of those who are not even that creative, I’ve kept the list to the six items above.

Notice that the first on on the list is…your name! This means that there is no need to end your e-mail by typing your name so that people will know who sent the e-mail. Otherwise, your message will look something like this:

Tammy,

Hey, it was great having lunch with you the other day. We should go back to that place sometime soon so we can try that chocolate brownie sundae. Let me know when you have a lunch hour free and we can go.

Talk to you soon.

--Bret

Bret Andersen
Assistant Vice President of the Department of Redundancy Department
E-Mail: b.repetative@dejavu.org
Phone: 345-555-1212
FAX: 345-555-2121
http://www.dejavu.org
“The best things in life are done over again!”

See what I mean? In case it wasn’t enough that Mr. Andersen has pretty much every bit of information you would ever need to know who he was, what he does and how to get ahold of him, he had to go and put his name at the end of the message…just in case the recipient didn’t read beyond that point.

Personally, I believe that this type of behavior should be dealt with swiftly and severely. Maybe take away the ergonomic keyboard and give him one of those Dell keyboards from when they eliminated all the “excess material” so that the keyboard was just big enough to fit the keys. Or, maybe switch out the mouse with a trackball so he has to re-learn how to use a pointing device all over again.

Whatever the case may be, this kind of thing has to stop. If you get an e-mail that the person signs their name right before their automatically attached signature, please point out to them, in a loving way at first, how silly this make them look. Let them know that you felt somewhat embarrassed for them. Sometimes, a little innocent humiliation can go a long way toward correcting unwanted behavior.

Avoiding the Hum Drum PowerPoint Slides

2010-11-12T05:00:00-08:00

I’ve always been a fan of cool looking PowerPoint slides. The problem is, I’m not a very right-brained, creative type person. So, as much as I like a super cool slide, if I ever have one in my own presentations, it’s probably because I stole the concept from some other presentation that I saw.

Things may be about to change, however. After reading about a feature of PowerPoint that was introduced in the 2007 version, I’m going to be using this little gizmo to see how much more interesting my slides can be.

Basically, this function takes your normal, mundane, bullet point list and converts it to SmartArt graphics to give it a sleeker, more professional look. Plus, it makes it look like you actually know what you’re doing so that people viewing you presentation will say things like, “Wow! That looks really cool. I would have never thought of using those awesome graphics. I would have probably just done boring, old bullet points.”

They may not say exactly that. In fact, they may not say anything at all. But I will console myself by imagining that, even if they say nothing, they’re at least thinking those kinds of thoughts. As long as nobody says, “Whoa! Who designed that slide? That is so 2007! Get with the times. It’s almost 2011 for cryin’ out loud!” then I should be able to convincingly tell myself that they’re in silent awe of my wicked cool slides.

Give it a try. I’d live to hear whether or not you think this is cool, geeky, lame or whatever. Don’t worry. I won’t take it personally (at least not that you’d know, since this is only a blog and I probably won’t write “*sob*” in the comments section in response).

International Scroll-Lock Day

2010-11-09T05:00:00-08:00

I know…it’s been a while since I posted anything. Mainly for lack of things to post about. But today is different. Today, I stumbled across something that I think all the geeks in technoland need to be aware of.

That’s right…International Scroll-Lock Day!

It’s coming. At the end of this month. That’s why I’m posting this now…so that anyone reading this can prepare beforehand. Make your plans now, whatever they may be. Here are some ideas for you to celebrate this little-known but all-too-important holiday:

Invite some friends over to watch the original TRON movie…be sure to buy a case of Zima!
Have a contest to see who can be the first person to boot a modern (less than 2 years old) computer using a DOS formatted, 3 1/2” floppy disk. (I thought about going right for the 5 1/4” disk, but let’s try to be realistic.)
Get with some friends and recite the entire movie, War Games.
Have a few bottles of wine coolers and laugh about “techie” movies like The Net, Hackers or Johnny Mnemonic.
Create a program that controls a motor attached to your blinds so that they open and close in just such a way as to signal, in Morse code, “Happy International Scroll-Lock Day!”

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. What other ways can you think of to celebrate this holiday?

Iron Man 2

2010-09-29T06:00:00-07:00

I find it ironic that this is the second revision of this technology and is being released tomorrow…the same day the Iron Man 2 movie is released on DVD. Check this out…

Windows 7 Here We Come

2010-09-27T06:00:00-07:00

Are you thinking about upgrading your system(s) to Windows 7? Well, if you are, you may be happy to know that Microsoft has a number of articles and videos to help you figure out the best way to make that happen.

There are videos and articles to help you figure out which version of Win 7 you may need as well as the various options for how to do your upgrade...whether you want to do an in-place upgrade, a clean install, using migration tools, etc.

Check out the information they have on their Technet site. Some of the videos can be a little slow and make you want to fast-forward through them, but be careful. You may skip over something that you might actually find useful.

The Future According to Microsoft

2010-09-24T06:00:00-07:00

If you haven't figured it out by the fact that I even have a blog like this, I am a geek. In the truest sense of the word. New technology gets me excited. I think the silliest, geekiest little things are abundantly cool. And I get very animated when discussing or looking at the future of technology and what will be able to be done.

It is for that reason that I thought I'd share this bit of geekdom with the rest of the world. In this case, it's with regards to the Microsoft Envisioning team's new video regarding some of the visions that they are going to be pursuing over the next 5-10 years or so. In some cases, it sounds like some of the technologies in this video are closer than many people may think.

Check out the video. I think it's pretty cool stuff if they can pull it off.

Speed Launch

2010-09-09T06:00:00-07:00

Here's an interesting tool that I may just have to check out. It's call Speed Launch and it is a way to make it faster and easier to get to and launch applications, URL's, open documents or other files or even call scripts. It's a first generation app, so I'm sure it's going to be evolving over the next year or two into something somewhat different.

Check it out...there's a description and a video at the Office blog.

Microsoft Humor

2010-08-03T06:00:00-07:00

Well, at least Microsoft can find humor in their own products and not take them all too seriously. Check out this comic regarding the Kin. It’s worth a chuckle.

WTF – Part II

2010-08-02T06:00:00-07:00

Last week, I mentioned something about a quick paste function in Excel. While I’m sure there may be somebody somewhere for whom that might be useful, I found something that may affect a bit wider of an audience.

This one has to do with MS Word. As with the Excel pasting, in Word it can be very frustrating sometimes to paste things into your document from a web page or another document and have the font style and size and line spacing and all that other stuff all messed up.

What if there were a way to “reset” the content of a Word document? Or, perhaps, just part of the content? What if I were to tell you that there is a way to do just that? Would you be excited?

If you answered “yes” to that, you probably need to get more of a life. But, if “interested” would be a better word than “excited,” check out this handy little keyboard shortcut (there is also a menu button for you mouse-driven people) available in Word.

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Imaging Systems

2010-07-29T06:00:00-07:00

Whether or not you currently have tools in place for image deployment, systems management or whatever, Microsoft still has some pretty cool tools that you can take advantage of. For starters, here’s an introduction to some terms and tools that you can take advantage of to make image deployment and even support just a little bit easier.

These tools can be used by themselves to manage and deploy images, or you can combine some of the tools and some of the functionality with existing tools you may have, such as LANDesk or Altiris. I know we’ll be looking more into this to see how we can incorporate them more.

Have you used these tools already? Have you used them by themselves? With other management tools? We’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment if you would like to share your experience with these technologies.

New Office Templates

2010-07-28T06:00:00-07:00

As an avid user of templates on the Microsoft Office website, I’m happy to hear that they have brought yet another partner on board to provide even more templates. Many of the templates on the Office site are not actually created by Microsoft but by partners, so the addition of a new partner means even more templates will be available.

Another nice thing is the fact that if you comment on their posted announcement of a new partner, you can request a template that you have not been able to find and someone will perhaps create it for you. Additionally, if you have a useful template to share, you can create your own profile on Office.com and share them.

The whole thing is explained here.

WTF = “What’s This Formatting?”

2010-07-27T06:00:00-07:00

So often, I have tried to copy and paste things from the Web into a Word document or Excel spreadsheet or some such thing. But, nowadays, when I do that I end up with all the weird formatting garbage from the page itself rather than simply the text that I’m trying to copy and paste.

Has that ever happened to you? Do you find it as annoying as I do? Well, I’ll have to check to see if this solution works in Word, but it does seem to work in Excel. Check out this handy tip about doing a quick paste in Excel.

And, if you try it in other applications and it works, let us know!

Unfolding the Napkin

2010-07-26T11:31:00-07:00

Ever have to work on a complex issue or project? If you’ve been working in technology for long enough, you probably have. We’ve all been there. Not sure where to start. Not sure how to map out how to get from “here” to “there.”

Here’s a review of a new book called Unfolding the Napkin by Dan Roam. This is the “sequel” of sorts to his previous book, The Back of the Napkin. The book will help you think visually in order to assess and better understand complex systems, network topologies, interconnection between sites, etc.

Check out this short, yet helpful review of this offering.

Consulting “Don’ts”

2010-07-23T06:00:00-07:00

Here is a great article on What Not to do on a Consulting job. Jack Wallen gives an excellent and very practical top 10 list of things to avoid when you are doing any consulting work for any business, regardless of the size of that business.

The sad fact is, like warnings on your coffee cup that you should be careful because your beverage is extremely hot, this list seems to have been born out of necessity. In other words, while some may think that these things are at the same “common sense” level as dressing nicely for a job interview (I said “common” sense..yes I know that there are those who don’t have it), these issues obviously needed to be addressed because someone, somewhere did these things.

What are some other things that you’ve seen people do (or have done yourself) that one should not do when on a consulting job?

Goodbye WSUS?

2010-07-22T06:00:00-07:00

A lot of companies out there probably use tools like LANDesk or Altiris to keep their Desktop systems up to date with the latest patches and fixes. Many other companies use WSUS for such things…mainly because it’s free. But, is Microsoft taking WSUS down the path to extinction?

In their ongoing effort to expand their cloud computing offerings, Microsoft is moving forward with their latest releast of their Intune management tool. On the one hand, I’m sure that this could become a very cool and handy tool to use. But then, I wonder at how many people will move quickly to this platform as I still hear about people having security concerns when it comes to managing their enterprise via a web interface which is outside their company (and hence not protected by their firewall) on a website that anyone can potentially gain access to.

Not that Microsoft hasn’t thought about this type of thing already. Though I don’t necessarily know a whole lot at this point about how they keep these things secure, so that’s a topic you’ll have to discuss with your local rep. I’m just pointing out that this is out there.

So, feel free to take a look at Windows Intune. If it seems like something that could meet your needs, great! If you want to pursue it further, great! If you’ve already starting working with Intune, please share with us how it’s going. What are the perils and pitfalls? How has it helped your organization?

Come on, share your knowledge and experience the the rest of us and we’ll share ours with you!

Obscure MS Office Feature

2010-07-21T06:00:00-07:00

Well, now…there just always seems to be some little feature of the applications we use all the time that just get overlooked. Recently, an article on the Microsoft Blog pointed out just that type of thing.

It would seem that, while I use the Recently Used Files list quite often, there was one little thing that I missed. Never mind that I look at this list pretty much every day. Yet, I still hadn’t noticed it.

Do you know what I’m referring to? Do you access a large number of MS Office files pretty regularly and find it almost annoying that there are just enough items in your Recently Used Files list to not go back quite far enough for you to find the one document you’re looking for?

Well, there is a solution. And here it is…check it out!