average admins

I’m puzzled, perplexed, and bewildered.  This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, except I’m pretty good at finding why a computer is running an unwanted program most of the time.  When I boot in to WinXP there is a very miniscule window frame at the top left of my screen.  Most of it is off the screen, just the bottom corner of the window shows.  I can drag it out to my desktop and see that it is a very, very small program window.  I started going through the process list in task manager when I noticed an iexplore.exe running when I didn’t have an IE window open. I killed the process and the window went away, but it comes back at the next log in.  I have reinstalled IE to try and fix, but it won’t go away.  Do any of you have any suggestions or knowledge of Malware that would do this.  I tried to Google it, but you could only guess how many near misses came up in the search listing. 

Ok, I’m doing some research for entry level gateway firwalls.  I’m looking at the SonicWall Pro 1260 w/ Enhanced OS and the Cisco ASA 5505 Security Plus Bundle.  Both have VPN, SSL peers, DMZ, and firewall capabilities.  I know that the number of ports don’t come close on the two, but I’m going to be pluggnig two Linksys switches uploaded to them that all 25 of my workstations link to.  Since I’m a little of a green horn at this security end of IT, what are your thoughts?

Have any of you started planning, tried, or considered a Vista rollout.  I know it is still early in the game and I personally will wait about another year before doing it in my company since I am still a one man IT department, and with that said R&D time is hard to find, also. I’ve seen a few local businesses here in Huntsville/ North Alabama try to use Vista in a tech support roll to much frustration on their own part.  I’ve had a 3rd party technician try to help me trouble shoot e-mail trouble on his Vista staion and he finally gave up and RDP’ed my XP station so he could help effectively.  I’m mostly wanting to hear a voice from a group of intligent people that I know I can trust an opinion from since the internet is full of opinions of questionable value.  I hope to scrape up enough budget to buy one Vista Business station for testing purposes, but I work for a small company and I don’t konw when that will be.

Geocaching is basically a world-wide scavenger hunt where all you’re given are GPS coordinates.

You can read more about geocaching here: http://www.geocaching.com/.

From the site:

What is usually in a cache?

A cache can come in many forms but the first item should always be the logbook. In its simplest form a cache can be just a logbook and nothing else. The logbook contains information from the founder of the cache and notes from the cache’s visitors. The logbook can contain much valuable, rewarding, and entertaining information. A logbook might contain information about nearby attractions, coordinates to other unpublished caches, and even jokes written by visitors. If you get some information from a logbook you should give some back. At the very least you can leave the date and time you visited the cache.

Larger caches may consist of a waterproof plastic bucket placed tastefully within the local terrain. The bucket will contain the logbook and any number of more or less valuable items. These items turn the cache into a true treasure hunt. You never know what the founder or other visitors of the cache may have left there for you to enjoy. Remember, if you take something, its only fair for you to leave something in return. Items in a bucket cache could be: Maps, books, software, hardware, CD’s, videos, pictures, money, jewelry, tickets, antiques, tools, games, etc. It is recommended that items in a bucket cache be individually packaged in a clear zipped plastic bag to protect them.

Currently, there are 80 hidden caches in Texarkana.

(more…)

Originally posted on cocoacrusty.com on Tuesday, April 17th, 2007.

I have been looking for a Mac OS X alternative to TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio ever since I started using my MacBook last year. Camtasia Studio allows you to capture videos of your computer’s desktop as you work in applications and then edit and arrange those captured videos to make a movie viewable in a number of different formats. You can even make interactive videos for training and educational purposes with Camtasia Software. Needless to say, the software is very impressive but it has only one drawback that keeps me from buying it… It is only available for Microsoft Windows machines and is not currently available for the Macintosh platform (and may never be available on a Mac unless we can do some CrossOver trickery).

Today, I was thinking about how I needed to redo a demo for some software I developed for my personal business, Fruitful Solutions, and I needed to see what was available for doing this on the Mac. My 30-day free trial of Camtasia Studio expired a while ago and I didn’t really want to pay the $299.00 for Camtasia Studio plus have to use my Windows machine to do the demo. I did some searching and came upon a great alternative for a really great price. Enter Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software.

Snapz Pro X, version 2.0.3, is a very powerful application allowing a number of screen capture features for still images and video. There are a number of different compression and output options available for both types of captures as well as the ability to record anything that is playing internally on the Mac’s audio system and from a microphone input. Basically, I get all the functionality I had with Camtasia Studio, minus some editing features that I can do within additional free software if necessary, for the very welcome and very low price of $69!

I used the software this evening to see how well it worked and after easily creating a video capture of my desktop and me messing around in some applications, I was sold. The output at 30 FPS was phenomenal and the file size was manageable. I believe this software has every feature that I am looking for to recreate my presentation and demo for my application, even at a price almost anyone with the need can afford.

If you’re in the market for some screen capture software for your Mac, I highly recommend looking into Snapz Pro X. There is a trial version available so you can try before you buy. Give it a shot. I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.

Until next time…

I’m cheap. Really cheap. If I can get something for free (legally, of course) I’ll do it. I’m also into junk. You might think that old hub is a candidate for the trash bin, but to me it looks like a perfect chassis for a DIY project.

Like most techs, I am given a lot of stuff that I just can’t use, and I would prefer to see it go to a good home. For example, I have a perfectly good Dell P3 sitting at the house that I will never use. I also have an extra keyboard, server, and a few other goodies too. What I’m proposing is that AA establish a new category called AA Trading Post. Any extra gear you have can be posted here for others to take advantage of. If you need gear (say, a hard drive for a dying machine at home), you can post a wanted ad as well. Here are the only two limitations:

• Gear must be free. This ain’t eBay, folks; remember, the goal is to see your hardware go to a good home. If it is nice enough that you could make some decent cash off of it, then you probably shouldn’t post it here anyway.
• Items listed must be technology related. No 4 wheelers or baby outfits. Beyond that, I think anything from a CPU to a soldering iron would be just fine.

I see two good things coming out of this: First, we get to clean out our garages (or make them worse!); Second, we could advertise this around on different sites, which would drive traffic up to AA. Texarkana needs a tech trading post, and this would be the perfect place.

What do you think? Let me know!

Josh

Now that I’ve gotten a Chicago’s greatest hit humming in your head I am invoking the combined powers of the AA geeks.  When my users recieve e-mail (from internal or external); the time Outlook shows as having recieved it is an hour into the future.  Now you are all thinking go check your time server, DST settings, did I get the DST patch installed…  Yes.  I’ve even called my 3rd party e-mail provider to make sure their time is set correctly. They told me to wait until today to see if it was correct because of the DST change confusion. If I send an e-mail to someone on another network thier Outlook shows as recieving it at the correct time.  The only thing I can think of is that the web server in my DSL router is showing the incorrect time, an hour later than true time.  I’ve gone into it and shut off its NTP server and tried to reset the web server’s time, which I couldn’t find settings for in telnet or http (its a Netopia 3347NWG) .  I’m grasping at straws now.  If any of you have a suggestion I’d love to hear it. 

While perusing through UniqueDaily.com, I came across this website talking about the 10 most expensive phones in the world.  Go Here.  Of course, the Sony Ericsson Black Diamond is one the best looking phones I’ve seen in awhile.  Anyway, have fun, check it out!!

jason

For all of us who text message constantly, we might be getting a faster way to send them! Check this video out! (Chris, one guy uses a Treo) Anyway, as soon as this technology is available for my BB 8800, I will be hooking that up. So, anyway, I found this by playing around on the net through a place called UniqueDaily.com. Okay, Go have fun and watch the clip! Tell me what you think! It would sure work nice for me, Jeff, Chris, and especially Troy, who despite all the peer pressure applied by the rest of us, will not switch to a full qwerty! Dang you Troy! Dang you all to heck! Well, I guess I can’t say much, being that I sold him the phone!

Later,

Jason

I stumbled across this and it made me feel…well…not educated!

The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time.

Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be a mind expanding book or a man eating tiger. Saving is used in the same way as saving a ball game, rather than as a savings account.

Adding to the confusion is that the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate, since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better, but it is not as politically desirable.