Ed Buford - Just Another Geek

Internet Cafe

My wife went with a team eye care specialists (I Care International) to Guatemala to give glasses to people in this very poor country. People lined up hours before they opened each day, and in four long days they dispensed over 2000 pair of glasses and the surgeons preformed 40 operations. She's been relatively unplugged the whole time with the exception of a few treks to an internet cafe to email me and chat on IM when we could. Here's a picture of the computer at the cafe she's been using:

Good Job Laura! Come home safely!

Jing

Tired of writing lengthy documents to explain something that you could more easily show someone? Jing might just be the aspirin for that headache. With Jing you can create a quick video including voice. It saves it as flash so you can open it with almost any browser, and it takes a lot less time than creating a doc with screen shots. The best part is that it's free... check it out.

 

Technorati Tags: Jing,Documentation

Google IMAP = Win / Win

I live in Outlook and I really like the way it's laid out; maybe Microsoft conditioned me, whatever, it works for me. That being said, if you're an Outlook user, you can understand why I don't like the Gmail interface.... I've used it for a long time now but still it's lacking and it's rather slow.

So today I decided to give Gmail's IMAP service a shot. Now I love Gmail !!!

The setup was easy and they have nice screen shots.... and here's why I love my Gmail now:

• It is so much faster
• I can create folders and pull stuff into them - it uses Googles Tags but it works flawlessly
• I can drag things out of one account and into another
• It keeps my email on the server
• I can send from the Gmail account in Outlook

Here are the instructions if you want to try it for yourself.

 

Technorati Tags: Gmail IMAP

No End in Sight

I've been at my workstation for 21 hours straight (with a potty break or 10) trying to solve the dreaded email server crash... Jason has interesting post here.

The past 36 hours have been quite the ride, I can't remember the last time I've put this much effort into anything.  A few hours ago I started the scary   eseutil /p procedure. Dustin told me to call him if the last restore I ran didn't fix it.... it didn't but I don't have the heart to call him in the middle of the night.

The eseutil is currently hung at the "Deleting unicode fixup table" screen; I've seen this before and I know not to stop it, even if I don't have a clue what it means.

I've been cranking some Pearl Jam tunes out while staring at the cursor that defiantly blinks at me as if to hypnotize me into sleep. Thankfully the odiferous stench emanating from my wastebasket full of chicken wings and pizza crusts is keeping me awake.... maybe I'll swap Kyle wastebaskets.

OpenDNS

I've been using OpenDNS as a content filter at my house for six months or so, it's easy and works pretty well. From time to time I'll run across a site I don't think should be blocked but is. For the most part I can live with the false positives... Well today I find they are blocking http://youtube.com. Unfortunately that's the breaking point for me, so now I'm on the hunt for a good, easy and free replacement.

Anybody got a good solution?

Crippled Software

It seems that the Roxio 9 software that came with my new Dell is crippled to the point it won't create ISO files. If it can create ISOs it certainly obfuscates the path to do so.

So to ease my grousing Kyle turned me on to CDBurnerXP it's free and it did the job... check it out.

Terminal Services Manager - Tip

Ever Get stuck in the wrong Remote Desktop session on your server?

Here's a tip that will save you some grief: open Administrative Tools and then open the Terminal Services Manager.

Right click on the session you want to connect to and choose connect... BAM you're in!

How cool is that?

Robocopy

I thought I'd take a few minutes to post about an old friend of mine.... Robocopy. It's part of the Server Resource Kit, if you don't already have the resource kit, download it here.

I won't go into detail as to how to use it, you can email me if you're having trouble with it, but here are some bullet points about what it will do for you.

• Copy Permissions
• Mirror Folder / Files
• Copy in restartable mode
• Copy only updated files
• Monitor Folders and Automagically update

And of course since this is a command line, you can script all the functions in a batch file.

For those of you who want a GUI, you can get one here.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

People all over our country, are pushing clock hands forward, while geeks have been patching servers, desktops, and mobile devices, to meet the new daylight savings time, shift.

As I sit here this morning wondering where that hour went; I'm reminded that time is more than seconds clicking away on some atomic clock. If there is more to life than counting the seconds till we die, then it's later than you think.

Dawn of a new era

Technorati tags: Mac Switch Mac vs PC Mac Convert

In order to better serve and understand the Mac users at GCC, Jason and I have switched to Macs as our primary laptop. Jason bought us each a Macbook Pro and I have been tasked with learning to use it. You might remember about a year ago I had one in my possession for a brief time, that won't be the case, this time it's my mine.

I've had this in my hands for a couple of days now, so here are my initial observations:

It's light and compact .

It feels nice and sturdy.

The Graphics are very crisp.

There's no place for an Auxiliary battery.

The battery life is abysmal

 I'll be posting more about my observations, experiences and Mac Life in general. It's true that I am of the PC persuasion and am bent in that direction. It will be interesting to see if this Mac can win me over.