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This is just a listing of all the documents, posts, and I guess you would call it a blog for the NOC. Feel free to browse the contents here, but if you are looking for something specific we recommend using the search feature.
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Last Updated: 01/18/2009 11:03 AM
Posted by Robert Hall on 07/13/2009 01:20 AM
I fix alot of systems these days that have issues due mainly to one thing... Out of date software!
So many issues can be caused by it, compatibility issues, slow response times, errors, glitches, but most common is viruses and spyware!
Running an out of date copy of Adobe reader now, can result in your system being infected by a virus or piece of spyware without you ever installing anything. The evil software will force its way into your computer through security vulnerabilities, and before you know it you will be getting pop up ads, random music and sounds on your computer.
Unfortunately there is no easy way to update all of your software with one touch. I can only hope that Microsoft and Apple start ...
Posted by Robert Hall on 07/11/2009 02:57 AM
Soooo.... Someone asked me some questions about facebook, in particular integration with another website. Thus despite my dislike of the service I decided to create a profile on the site and try to see what the hype is all about.
To summarize what I feel about it, have you seen the rant Christian Bale had with his lighting manager? No? Well check it out, be warned there is much profanity to be had:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrvMTv_r8sA
Have you seen it? Well that's pretty much how my reaction is to facebook.
Seriously? What were they thinking. Yes I understand that the focus of the site is to get connected with your friends, but the whole naviga...
Posted by Robert Hall on 06/21/2009 01:30 PM
So I was out the other day setting up a Compaq computer for a customer they just purchased. I hooked it up, and turned it on and was greeted with a POST screen that had this on it:
Forgive the poor quality as it was taken with a cell phone... However this screen instantly brought back some memories of something I did a couple years ago on another site...
That's right, I had made some images years ago on "lawn mower safety" after ...
Posted by Robert Hall on 06/12/2009 10:37 AM
I've recently found out some news that is a bit unsettling about our world wide GPS system. For those of you who don't know GPS is the Global Positioning System, consisting of several satelites that orbit the earth. These satelites beam down information on where they are located, and with a signal from at least four of these you have a solid position of where you are on the earth.
Well I've started to notice that my GPS is making me jump around, it's shown me in the middle of the Atlantic ocean a couple of times, and a few miles off of where I actually am, and sometimes a few hundred feet off. So I hooked up my older GPS that has worked fine in the past, and it was doing the same thing.
So I've done some research, and ask...
Posted by Robert Hall on 05/02/2009 05:19 PM
This is something I've been meaning to post for quite awhile, and that is just how unreliable todays hard drives are. Not just one brand or another, but standard hard drives in general.
A standard disk based hard drive stores information on one or more platters that have a magnetic field applied to very very small places on the drive. This is where the bits and bytes of your data live, and when you think about how a hard drive works, you should be a bit concerned.
A hard drive works alot like an old school record player in that you have a drive head that goes across the surface and reads, and writes data. This drive head picks up the magnetic values written to the drive surface and sends them to the computer itself for pr...
Posted by Robert Hall on 04/19/2009 03:38 PM
Just the other day I was going through and checking the specs on my system to see how I could go about doing a small upgrade to it to get a little extra performance. I remembered that I had a motherboard with an AM2+ socket, and that I only had an AMD X2 4000 in the socket.
So like any tech person would do I checked what my board could support and found that with a bios update I could put in a Phenom X4 9650 (Avoid the 9600 as many still have the TLB issue).
Now I always like to avoid a Bios update for the following reasons:
Each time you perform an update you weaken the EPROM. They are not intended to be written to more than a couple of times, and after that they can start to act flakey.
...
Posted by Robert Hall on 03/27/2009 01:55 AM
Eventually at some point you will need to provide a PDF (Portable Document Format) to someone. The great thing about PDF files are that almost everyone has a reader for them installed, usually Adobe Acrobat reader. Let's say you have a document, or special program that you need to give someone a report from. In most cases you simply send the person the file for them to use. However they might not have the program, or it'snt feasible to send the entire file.
Using a PDF printer you can simply print the report or document to PDF, and they can read it. There are several PDF printers on the market, alot of them are a bit costly (a few hundred dollars). Microsoft Office 2007, and Apple computers now have a builtin PDF printer, however...
Posted by Robert Hall on 03/15/2009 12:59 PM
Before we start doing any work on the EEE900, lets take a look at the system specifications and see how we can make them better for the tasks that we will be doing with it.
Processor: Intel Celeron M 900mhz
RAM: 1GB 667mhz DDR2
Hard Drive: 16gb Solid state PCI-E
Cooling: Passive
Wireless: Builtin Atheros AR5007EG
OS: Windows XP Home (Asus Customized)
I know that stats don't see all that impressive, and there are only a few things we can change. First thing the Customized Asus XP Home we want to keep. The reason for this is all of the extra power conservation features, in addition to the removal of extra nonse...
Posted by Robert Hall on 03/13/2009 01:35 PM
I've decided to start on a little side project, involving a Asus EEE 900 netbook. I've had this little 900 series for almost half a year now, and I've gotten use to it's little quirks and well I want to do something about them, and make it just generally awesome.
I'll be posting updates to this project over the next couple weeks so stay tuned here for updates to it.
First lets go over what I do with this little puppy.
Check email
Browse webpages
Download drivers while at customers location
Test wireless access at customers locations
Present webpages/proposals to customers
Make quick website changes onsite with customers
...
Posted by Robert Hall on 02/15/2009 03:16 AM
Ever wonder what kind of performance you really are getting out of your hard drive, but just not sure how to find out.
Well there is a free utility called Crystal Disk Mark (http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html) that will allow you to test the read and write speed of your drive in just a few minutes.
There are a few options in this program to allow you to setup your own tests, especially if you want to test higher loads, or extended cycles. However for most people the standard settings will work just fine.
<...
Posted by Robert Hall on 01/28/2009 10:04 PM
Everyone has to install a printer on their computer eventually if they want to get any kind of work done. However everytime I have had to install a printer on a Macintosh it seems to be an epic feat.
Ok, let me explain my typical setup.
Usually the printer is directly connect to a Windows system via USB
I want to use the printer with multiple systems on my network
I want to save a few bucks and not have to buy a special network adapter/printer that sits directly on the network.
Pretty simple right? This is pretty similair to how most home networks are setup as there is little money to be spent on setting them up. Sure I would love to get a nice HP Laserjet with a netw...
Posted by Robert Hall on 01/26/2009 06:00 PM
Before I start, I am all for digital video and audio. The quality is better, the picture is great, the sound is crisp.
That alone would make me want to have only digital video and audio equipment. However there is one thing that keeps me from doing it, well technically two things. Cost, and what I can do with the digital signal.
Think about it, for around $20 of hardware, I can split an analog video connection to go to two monitors at the same time. With digital I would have to spend much more, if I could even do it at all. Most digital equipment now uses a USB connection, the more professional stuff uses firewire (which you can buy converters and splitters for) however those cost an arm and a leg!
Then you have t...
Posted by Robert Hall on 01/18/2009 03:39 PM
As you may have seen the other day on Twitter I had just finally gotten around to upgrading my home desktop to Windows Vista (Another post will be made on that soon). Of course in the process of doing an operating system upgrade there will always be a program or two that does'nt work, acts weird, or just has to be reinstalled.
One product I did not expect to have this issue with was Adobe Photoshop CS2. I have been using Adobe Photoshop 7 on another 100% work based computer running Vista for months, and had no issues at all. So surely the newer much better CS2 product should have run just as good you would think.
Well once I got Vista installed, and updated one of the first things I decided to do was start working on the...
Posted by Robert Hall on 01/18/2009 11:03 AM
This is just a listing of all the documents, posts, and I guess you would call it a blog for the NOC. Feel free to browse the contents here, but if you are looking for something specific we recommend using the search feature.
Thanks,
...
Posted by Robert Hall on 01/18/2009 04:51 AM
As you may have noticed, we have updated the look of the NOC website. The design gave us a little bit of trouble because we wanted a fully dynamic width and height to the site (Not easy using just CSS). However we got the hard part done, which is the layout. Now it's just a matter of adding and fixing some links here and there.
Some key things you might like about this new design:
It actually has a feel of a "NOC" (Network Operations Center) the top navigation represents a KVM switch.
We re-arranged the advertising to work better, and not break the page and make it easier to read.
We consolidated the Twitter feed, and changed it to be pulled via RSS on our end.
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