Apparently, it’s a myth that “[t]he fluid from the resulting [poison ivy] blisters [spreads] poison ivy to others.” All the same, please don’t get your poison ivy blister juice on me.
Sick of cable. Sick of paying for cable. Sick of the worthless shows on cable. Sick of entire swaths of channels on cable. Blockbuster‘s deal is fine — $20/month for 3 movies out at a time. For regular TV, the only shows worth watching are House, Lost, and Family Guy, and I’m going to get them over the air. I have to switch my Internet access to AT&T DSL first. Goodbye, cable!
Now, per month: $100 for cable. $40 month for cable Internet. $20 month for Blockbuster. ($160/month)
Later, per month: $0 for TV, $25 for AT&T DSL. $20 for Blockbuster. ($45/month)
Difference: $115/month. $1380/year. After-tax money, obviously.
Do you have old print drivers hanging around?
Use the Print Migrator utility to back up your printer config:
printmig -b "server_name.cab"
And then remove the unused print drivers:
cd /d %systemroot%\system32
cscript prndrvr.vbs -x
As mentioned in Mark Russinovich’s newest blog entry, here’s a quick introductory video on ZoomIt, the 44KB screen zoom and drawing utility that should be in every IT toolbox (along with everything else from Sysinternals).
Corporate mail should be filtered for viruses and spam at the gateway — that’s just a given. It’s much more efficient to filter incoming email in one spot than to check it at 300 or 25000 desktops. Web browsers should go through a scanning, filtering proxy. Again, it’s much simpler to secure and maintain.
So, what if you have a corporate standard document format and don’t want the cascading issues with users receiving and opening/converting/saving non-standard files? Wouldn’t it make sense to convert the document on the way in?
A rules-based system makes sense.
Consider a resumes@example.com address that receives resume submissions for HR. You do not want HR bugging you about weird documents. I’d set a rule that any attachment (Microsoft Word .doc, Microsoft Works document .wps, RTF, OpenDocument, etc.,) gets automatically converted to PDF — they’re resumes to be read or printed, and should be read-only. Email gets scanned, attachments are analyzed and extracted, attachments are converted and reinserted, a note is added that it was automatically converted and the archive document is at such and such for so long if there are problems, and thank you.
Rules wouldn’t be terribly complicated, either. Off the top of my head:
- All Postscript (*.ps) convert to PDF. Simple.
- Pass all compressed (*.zip, *.gz, *.bz2, etc) unmodified.
- Convert to Open Office XML all (*.doc, *.wps, *.rtf, WordPerfect, and other text formats).
- Same goes for Lotus 1-2-3 docs and kin.
- Image formats convert to PNG. Example, with rule that the Graphics department is exempt.
- And so forth….
I haven’t checked the Microsoft Office license, but I’m pretty sure you’d only need one licensed copy for the gateway, so I’ll check. Image conversion is simple enough, using ImageMagick, NConvert, and others.
ABC reports that Americans fit 31 hours of activity in each 24 hour day. Driving and cell phone usage are the most obvious doublings. Watching TV, working on the computer, and ignoring the wife is the most obvious tripling.
On my lunch hour I go to the gym and walk on the treadmill, but I can’t do it unless I have something to read — it drives me nuts just staring around. An idea whose time has come: night college courses where students are on treadmills instead of desks. You heard it here first. I’d like to take an electronics course. I’d also like to take a calligraphy course, too, but that probably wouldn’t work on the treadmill.
Java developers and testers should use FindBugs to find and fix Java bugs. It’s free, and the FindBugs team has concentrated on having a high hit ratio, as developers won’t use lint’ing tools that spew out pedantic non-errors. FindBugs can run standalone or as an Eclipse plug-in. Watch the Google Labs video linked on the front page for a good 45-minute introduction. Continue reading ‘Detect and Fix Java Bugs’ »
When making charts, graphs, or other figures to be presented to an audience, use a safe color palette, and use color-alternate hints to differentiate data (e.g., shading, hatching, varying line thickness).
“How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people” is the best document I’ve seen on the topic. Save the PDF for handy reference. The authors point out that protanopes and deuteranopes can’t see red laser pointers very well or at all, so use a green laser pointer instead.
Pie charts are worse than useless. Use a simple table or bar graph. Continue reading ‘Don’t Use Pie Charts’ »
I encourage most everyone I talk to to view the online Stanford Energy Lectures given by Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute. There are five lectures of about an hour and a half per, and Amory is an interesting speaker. It’s great knowledge and pertains to efficiency in general, not just electrical.
A recent LifeHacker thread on natural water flavoring has me thinking I should have a couple of small pots in the office, so I can grow cucumber and mint. I’d have never thought to put a sliver of cucumber skin in my water. Cucumber under fluorescent lighting should do fine, and mint is impossible to kill.
PowerPoint presentations almost always suck. There’s a reason for that.
At church, after the singing and liturgical items are done, the lights are dimmed and the sermon begins, which struck me as odd the first few times. But having been stuck in business presentations with glaring overhead lights, it really is better — you relax more and can concentrate better.
PBS Nova “Ape Genius” program. Explains the 15% of behaviors “The Office” doesn’t.
A lot of junior Windows admins think that the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) is sufficient to test the security of IIS websites. Continue reading ‘Website Baseline Security Analysis’ »
Server BIOS time should be set to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Doesn’t work with Windows, though, which is why a lot of people don’t bother POSIX systems use GMT, so follow something like OpenBSD’s FAQ on the matter.
I was searching for an old essay today and ran across this, so I’m tagging it for future perusal. Computer reading.
Play a very loud annoying sound for 10 seconds. Then play the exact same 10 seconds, but add on 5 seconds of the sound growing softer and more pleasant. Then ask someone which sound they prefer. They’ll pick the second sound, even though it’s annoying for longer — it includes the exact 10 seconds of annoying, plus some. Continue reading ‘Happy Endings (The Peak-End Rule)’ »