May 2006 Archives
Network Core Team Meeting Notes
26 May 2006
Attendees:
Luke, Larry, Robert, Philip, Mike, Jim
Planned Events:
Bryan Center server change June 1 (Mike and Greg)
Centeq server update (Mike and Rory)
Animal Science server update (Jim)
Vernon Center server update (Robert)
Horticulture server update (Mike and Paul Greer)
Overton Center drive changes (Jim)
We have all experienced a power surge or an outage. A power outage is a pain, but really doesn't do much damage. At least not until the power comes back on when there may be a surge. We will visit about outages in another article, let's talk about too much power - surges.
What is it? A power surge, sometimes called transient voltage, is an increase in voltage significantly above normal. In the U.S. using normal household and office wiring, the standard voltage is 120 volts. If the voltage rises above 120 volts, it is problem. Computers, TVs, and other "electronic" appliances are very sensitive to surges. The result of surge can be anything from your computer locking up unexpectedly to fried electronics!
A relatively simple surge protector is just the insurance you need. So spend the $15 - $25 bucks now and not the $1000 or more bucks later!
Want to know more about surge protectors, how they work, and how to choose one - just click continue and read on!
Well it was bound to happen, and one night it did, quoting Garth Brooks! Back on October 6, 2005 I warned all my users and anyone else that would listen that you were/are basically playing electronic roulette with your data if you are not backing up your PC frequently. Would you believe in the past three weeks, I have had 5 workstation hard drives fail!! What does that mean? Well, in 3 of the 5 cases, no data was recoverable off the hard drive. That's right, nothing - zip could be saved!! And, 5 out of 5 had no backup of their data in any form!
Don't be the next victim! Who needs to backup? Well ask yourself this question, if I walked in the office tomorrow and my machine was stolen, is there anything on there I would miss or could not live without? If you answered yes, you need to be backing up because a hard drive failure is pretty much like the machine being stolen.
Here are two options to backup your PC. Both are very simple, you just need to take the time to follow the directions. Option one, back in October I posted the EIT Two Step Workstation Backup. If you don't have the Nero CD burning software on your machine then use this option, click for more info. If you have purchased a Gateway from the Cost-share progam in the past 2 or 3 years, all these machines came with the Nero StartSmart CD burning software. This OPS entry will walk you through how to use that application to backup your PC
Network Core Team Meeting Notes
19 May 2006
Attendees:
David Noll, Mike, Philip, Jim, Robert
Planned Events:
Bryan Center server change June 1 (Mike and Greg)
Centeq server update (Mike and Rory)
Animal Science server update (Jim)
Vernon Center server update (Robert)
Horticulture server update (Mike and Paul Greer)
Overton Center drive changes (Jim)
To read full test click continue.
Network Core Team Meeting Notes
5 May 2006
Attendees:
Mike, Luke, Jim, Carol
Planned Events:
Bryan Center server update (Mike & Greg)
Centeq server update (Mike & Rory)
Horticulture server update (Mike & Paul Greer)s
DMS hardware configuration (Carol)
Network Core Team Meeting Notes
28 Apr 2006
Planned events:
Bryan Center server upgrade (Mike)
Centeq server upgrade (Mike)
Hard drive additions in Overton (Jim)
Document Management System install (Carol)
Network Core Team Meeting Notes
21 April 2006
Attending: Carol, Robert, Luke, Mike, Jim, Philip
Planned events:
Centeq Migration
Bryan Center Migration
NETC meeting
Document Management System Setups
Next Meeting 28 April 2006
For full text of meeting continue:
On May 10, I was attending a session at the NETC 2006 conference where a presenter, Vince Verbeke from PSU, demonstrated this cool temporary file cleaner titled ATF-Cleaner.exe. ATF-Cleaner.exe is a new freeware temporary file cleaner application. It will remove Windows IE and Firefox temp files with an easy-to-use interface that does the job safely and without removing files that are crucial to Windows.
The main dialog box allows you to either clean all temporary files or select files for cleaning. The program also knows if Firefox is being used, and gives you the option of cleaning the temporary files associated with this application too. Also, ATF Cleaner will provide you with a dialog box showing the total bytes freed upon completion of the cleaning. For more information about ATF Cleaner by Atribune, click here.
This OPS entry will walk you through the download and how to run this temporary file cleaner. Note - This program will run on XP and Windows 2000 only.
Note - For good and secure PC health, I would recommend that you run ATF-Cleaner at least once a month.
For the last year or so, I have encouraged many (all) of you to install Microsoft's AntiSpyware (Beta 1). It was a free program and worked pretty well at keeping Spyware off your machine. One of the nice features was the real-time protection and the scan scheduler. Well, I am sad to say but all things must end, and as of 7/31/06 the current version of AntiSpyware Beta 1 will expire.
Do Not PANIC!! There is a new solution, and I think you are going to like the price too! Microsoft has introduced a new product to take the place of AntiSpyware (Beta 1). The product is Windows Defender (Beta 2) and it is FREE! So please take a few minutes to download, install, and setup this new product. If you don't, you will be calling me in the near future with thousands of pop-ads and a machine that will be performing at a crawl. At that point it will potentially cost you a few hours to a days to clean up the machine rather than a few minutes.
Please watch this very informative video from Microsoft about Spyware by clicking here. This video only takes a couple of minutes and will help you better understand spyware and how to prevent it on your machine.
This OPS entry will walk you through the download, install, and optimal setup for Windows Defender (Beta 2). You must be using Windows 2000 or Windows XP to use this software.
Starting with the Fall Cost-share in 2002, EIT offered Microsoft Office 2003 on all workstations and laptops. MS Office included several old favorites like Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, but also included two applications you may not be as familiar with, Access and Publisher. For more information about Publisher 2003, please visit Microsoft's Publisher website by clicking here. This Tech OPS entry will be the first of 4 teaching you some basic Publisher skills using a case study. At the end of the series, I will be holding a Centra Event to answer any questions live or go back through anything you did not understand on the OPS blog. I will publish the date for the Centra Event later.
MS Publisher 2003 is easier to use than WordPerfect or Word to create newsletters, brochures, business cards, postcards, flyers, etc., for printing or posting to your website. The best thing is you don't have to start from scratch, there are hundreds of built-in templates and layouts to help you. Start with one you like then customize it to get the look and feel like you want.
For this OPS entry, we are going to learn to how to pick a design for a one page Event Flyer and enter our contact information.
From time to time we have been asked how to convert video files from Quicktime to something that is more Windows and Microsoft friendly. You can identify Quicktime files by the MOV format. Folks may want to use these movies in applications like PowerPoint, Windows Movie Maker, or Windows Media Player. This Tech OPS entry will introduce you to a free tool that will easily and quickly convert Quicktime (MOV)movie files to a more Windows friendly format know as AVI. Once converted, the AVI file can then be imported into Windows based applications.
To convert a MOV video to an AVI video follow these easy steps.
