Season's greetings

I had hoped to add at least one other post before Christmas, but events conspired against me, particularly wrestling with low technology (hammer, saw, etc) as I struggled to complete a major home building project before Christmas Day. The timber companies, incidentally, are very obliging. Instead of leaving you to worry whether the timber you bought will warp later, they pre-warp it for you.
I hope you have a joyous Christmas and a fulfilling New Year, and I will be back on air from the middle of January. In the meantime, if you are a new visitor to this blog, check out the archives, as most of the posts are non-dating.
Cheers!

True tales from the help desk

Helpdesk: "What kind of computer do you have?" "A white one."
Helpdesk: "Click on the 'My Computer' icon on to the left of the screen." Customer: "Your left or my left?"
User says: "My monitor did not pass the drop test during our department move. I would like to get another one."
Customer: "My keyboard is not working anymore." Helpdesk: "Are you sure it's plugged into the computer?" Customer: "No. I can't get behind the computer." Helpdesk: "Pick up your keyboard and walk 10 paces back." Customer: "Okay." Helpdesk: "Did the keyboard come with you?" Customer: "Yes." Helpdesk: "That means the keyboard is not plugged in. Is there another keyboard?" Customer: "Yes, there's another one here. Ah, that one works!"
Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. "What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
Systems Admin is browsing among the digital cameras at a big discount store when he overhears another customer complaining about the cost of the digital film for her camera. "She said it was too expensive to keep buying memory cards because she filled them up so quickly." He explains to her that she can copy her pictures from the cards onto a computer, then erase the cards and reuse them. The customer is delighted for a moment, then she frowns and asks, "Now what am I going to do with those 25 extra cards?"
New employee complains to help desk that there's something wrong with her password. No, it's not CAPS lock. "The problem is that whenever I type the password, it just shows stars," says user. Those asterisks are to protect you, tech explains, so if someone were standing behind you, they wouldn't be able to read your password. "Yeah," user says, "but they show up even when there is no one standing behind me."
Customer: "I have problems printing in red." Helpdesk: "Do you have a color printer?" Customer: "Ah. Thank you."
Customer: "I have a huge problem. A friend has put a screensaver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears!"
Helpdesk: "How may I help you?" Customer: "I'm writing my first e-mail." Helpdesk: "Okay, and what seems to be the problem?" Customer: "Well, I have the letter 'a' in the address, but how do I get the circle around it?"
"I know you'll think I'm crazy, but Elvis keeps crashing my computer," this user tells help desk. And she's right - when she takes a CD-ROM out of the drive, Elvis starts singing. It was finally figured out: Apparently, she put an Elvis CD in the drive on top of another CD, and it got stuck on the plunger of the CD-ROM drive. When she took out a CD, Auto-run would start the audio CD (stuck on the plunger), and Elvis started singing!
A lady was putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. I inquired as to what she was doing and she said she was shopping on the internet, and they asked for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."
"Everything on my laptop is turning blue," user complains. Support rep hustles to the scene and finds user has attached the laptop to a video projector. The wall you're using as a projection screen is painted light blue, support rep patiently points out. "I know that!" user snaps. "I'm not stupid. Just fix the thing so it projects white!"
A distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery for this?" "Hmmm, I don't know. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked. "No, just the remote 'thingy'" she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries as it's a long walk."
1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax machine?" 2nd Person: "A little. What's wrong?" 1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened." 2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?" 1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient would open it and read it."
A Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the tech discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.
User has got her third replacement monitor in as many months, so support tech checks it out - and finds water under the monitor, but no source of a leak. The next day, he's walking by and catches the user's new secretary in action. "I explained to her that watering a plant on top of any electronic equipment is a bad idea, and that maybe watering an artificial plant wasn't the best use of her time either." True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp: Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?" Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?" Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?" Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?" Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer." Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotion, at a trade show?" Caller: "It came with my computer. I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it." At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!

Time-saving keyboard shortcuts

A colleague of mine once lost one and a half hours of work when his computer froze because he forgot to save the Word document he was working on. Because he had not even done a first-time save, the program could not recover anything. Sadly, this is an all-too-common experience. I've got into the habit of saving my work every five minutes of so, which has saved my skin more times than I can recall. (The habit is so ingrained that one time I even wrote something by hand on a piece of paper, and then tried to save that!) I think one of the reasons people don't save more regularly is they don't like making a special trip to the menu bar at the top of the screen. This is where keyboard shortcuts are invaluable. It's easy to type an extra letter without breaking your flow of work. Control-S (on the Mac, Command-S) saves in every program I know. Here are a few more universal shortcuts that I hope will become second nature to you:
Ctrl-C : Copy
Ctrl-V : Paste
Ctrl-P : Print
Ctrl-W : Closes the document window
Ctrl-N : Opens a new document
Ctrl-O : Opens an existing document (via a popup dialogue box)
And here are a few common shortcuts for text selected in most word-processing programs:
Ctrl-i : italic
Ctrl-b : bold
Ctrl-u : underline
Ctrl-a : selects all text in the document
Another useful one: Pressing the Tab key when filling in forms or fields jumps you to the next field or part of the form.

It's not your fault, Part II

"All these labels -- 'geek' and 'nerd' and 'mild Asperger's -- are all getting at the same thing. ... The Asperger's brain is interested in things rather than people, and people who are interested in things have given us the computer you're working on right now." (Temple Grandin, an associate professor at Colorado State University, on the connection between people with a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome and IT professionals.)

Using a camera as evidence

Writing in The Box (The Press's weekly technology section), Will Harvie has a good tip when you are returning hired or leased goods (in his case, a storage locker). He took pics of the locker just before surrendering it, to prove it was in good condition after he had finished. He had learned his lesson from a previous rental car hire, as the agency claimed he had damaged the vehicle, when he was positive he had not but could not prove his claim. All digital cameras can add the time and date to the photograph, so you have good evidence to back up your side of the story, if it should ever come to a dispute.

Trumping telemarketers

The lady of the house answered the phone, to a heavily accented voice at the other end. "Good day, madam," he said. "How are you today?"
"Actually, I'm not feeling very well at the moment," she replied (which was true). "Can I tell you about it?"
CLICK!
Guess the telemarketer's script didn't cover that.

Alleviating frustrations

I used to be frustrated that I could not re-order the program and document buttons on the Windows taskbar at the foot of my screen. Taskbar Shuffle is an elegant, simple (and free) solution. With it installed, you just drag the buttons wherever you want.
If, like me, you don't like the "Awesome bar" feature of Firefox 3's address box - too much information, too cumbersome - Oldbar is a free add-on that takes it back to the Firefox 2 style. Now if someone can tell me a simple way to remove the Office 2007 "ribbon" style menus and get back to the Office 2003 style menus, I will kiss your feet.

Holiday security

There’s one dread I have of going on holiday: returning home and finding my computer stolen. I mean, that’s my life in there! So I’ve been thinking how I can make it more secure. Last year, I taped a note to it saying: “This computer will not work if removed from this location”. (Note to friendly burglars: please don’t read this blog.) Okay, it was a bit forlorn. How can I do better this year?
1)Set up a logon password (user account). I have one at work, but not at home. Not good. To do this on a PC, go to the Start menu/Settings/Control panel/User Accounts.
2)Make a backup of all data files (you do back up, don’t you!!??) and store the disk somewhere outside the home. The simplest way, even if a bit clumsy, is to copy the files onto a CD or DVD or flash drive/memory stick.
3)Take the computer to a friend or relative who’s going to be home over the holidays.
4)Ask the neighbours to keep an eye on the house.
5)Install a software fire and burglar alarm system on the computer. One example is PC Alarm and Security System. I haven’t tried this, but it’s not particularly expensive to buy, and looks very versatile.
6) PCEye is another system, which phones you up on your cell phone when the alarm is triggered.
6)Other systems track stolen computers and report their wherabouts. Examples are LoJack, CompuTrace, CyberAngel, and zTrace.
Any other ideas very welcome.

Scroll wheel clicking

Here's a little tip if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel (sorry, most Mac users). If you click on an internet link with the scroll wheel, rather than the left button, it opens the link in a new tab of your browser. This appears to work in Internet Explorer as well as Firefox.

Annoying stuff and how to fight back

Pat Pilcher lists 20 things she/he (?) finds annoying in today's world, and how you can fight back with technology. Sadly, the answer in many cases would appear to be that there is no real answer, and some of his/her suggestions would only make things worse. It might be hard on the ego, but the old adage that "a soft answer turns away wrath" could be a better response to some of her/his pet peeves. But here are a few other responses that could help:
Telemarketing calls: Some ladies I know have come up with this plan. When called by a survey company, they say: "Before I spend 20minutes answering your questions, will you spend 5 minutes listening to me?" Then they give a quick outline of their faith. Because I have done studies in market research, I have found another way to amuse myself is to start asking questions about methodology and survey construction, etc. The questioner often gives up in frustration.
Bad drivers: You can call 555 on your cellphone to report a really bad driver. Otherwise, it's probably better to curb your temper (and no, I don't find that easy). It's better to lose the race than to wind up a very bad statistic.
Heavy traffic: Change your radio station. I listen to the Concert Programme on heavy days, and it really does soothe the nerves.
Unfriendly staff: I have found a handwritten letter to management a very effective tool (and it can produce a nice freebie, as well). By the same token, I like to write a letter of thanks when I get really good service.
Unwanted electronic advertising: If you are getting spam email, I would definitely suggest changing your email provider. All the good providers have fairly good filters in place now.
Bad service providers: I had a real run-in with Telstra a couple of months back. I carefully documented the situation, and wrote a long letter, to which I did get an apology. I also discovered that if you front up to their office in person, while there's no-one there to help you, you get priority in the phone queue on their office phone.
Parking: We all know that Auckland and Wellington parking is outrageous. So plan ahead, leave earlier, and park and ride. (Or cycle. Or move to a civilised city, like Christchurch.)

Email bankruptcy

What do you do when you get utterly overwhelmed by emails? Why, declare email bankruptcy, of course!

Are you a victim of "technosis?

Naturally there's a word for it (isn't there always?).

"In their book, TechnoStress: Coping With Technology @WORK @HOME @PLAY, Michelle M. Weil, Ph.D. and Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D. assert that the growing dependence on technology affects us negatively. We count on our machines to do so much that when something goes wrong with our technology we are thrown into a tailspin. According to Weil and Rosen, "People allow themselves to be sucked into this technological abyss, and in doing so they become more machine-oriented and less sensitive to their own needs and the needs of others. Some people become so immersed in technology that they risk losing their own identity." This is called "Technosis."

Of course, they're trying to sell you something. But it is nice to know.

Don't mention the war (and die)

One of the more vexing questions for us computer users is how to keep our systems safe from all the nasties out there. (And don't snigger, Mac owners - the news is not all good for you, either.) If you have any sort of connection to the internet, you are prey to viruses, malware, phishing attacks and goodness-knows-what. It's like war out there, except it's in here. The scary thing is that, while it is relatively simple to put some reasonable protections in place (stressing the words "relatively" and "reasonable"), a lot of people don't bother to do the basics.
One of those basics is keeping your operating system up-to-date to fend off the baddies that try to creep in through the back door. The fixes are called "patches", and if you have a PC, Microsoft issues new patches every month to fix new security issues that have come to light. You can set up your computer to accept these patches automatically (if you're not sure how, email me). Sadly, many users ignore patching their systems (and if you are on a dial-up connection, I can understand the hassle of downloading big files all the time). According to PC World, though, the message simply is not sinking in.
Most Mac owners smugly think they are immune from the attacks that have bedevilled PC users for years. Another PC World article shows that is no longer true. Be warned!
If I haven't already made you paranoid, according to PC World, 2008 was a record year for the increase in malware.
Apart from system patches, unless you are behind a company firewall, at the very least you should have installed on your computer a firewall, an anti-virus program, and tools to keep you clean. The following are some I use (and all are free):
WinPatrol: protects your computer from Adware, Spyware, Worms, Trojans Horses, and alerts you to intruders trying to change your system.
Threatfire: protects your PC against attacks by detecting malicious behavior, such as capturing your keystrokes or stealing your data.
Ashampoo Firewall: This company makes seriously good software, and their free firewall is as good as most commercial products.
CCleaner: (The first "c" stands for "crap!). A freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool.
Spyware Doctor: Detects, blocks and removes all kinds of spyware.
Adaware: Another good defence against spyware.

Helen, my ADD hero

My wife is one of my heroes. A couple of years back, she was diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a condition she has had all her life but only just now realised. Despite this, she has accumulated two sets of letters after her name (a Ministry Diploma from the Bible College of NZ, and a Certificate in Adult Teaching from the College of Education at Canty University). She is a prime example of someone who copes in a technological age, even though it's a constant struggle for her. As we've researched more about the condition, we have discovered many adults with ADD who have gone for years not realising. Here's a short video we made of Helen's ADD journey, and her desire to establish a support group.

Cleaning out the junk

I am a hoarder. I hate throwing away things. Invariably, when I am finally persuaded by my wife, the next day I could have used it. But when it comes to junk on my computer I am almost ruthless, no more so than in my email program. There can be a thousand reasons why computers slow down, but a common one is that the email program is clogged - and do I mean clogged. I looked over a friend's computer recently, and he had never deleted a single email. There were thousands of old files in there! And, of course, many of those files had big attachments, all of which the email program was groaning to try and cope with. Here's the drill: 1) Ditch everything from the In box, except those emails you must keep. And create folders in which to store them. 2) Go to the "Sent" section, and delete everything except, perhaps, the last few weeks worth. 3) Go to the "Deleted items" or "Trash" section, and delete everything there. (Stuff does not automatically vanish from the system when you hit the delete key in the In box. You have to manually clean it out from "Deleted...") 4) Compact your folders, by going to the File menu and then choosing "Folders", then "Compact all folders". Your computer will send you flowers for this.

Taming the PC taskbar

One of the (many) annoying things about the PC taskbar - that strip at the bottom of the screen which shows all your open applications and documents - is its inflexibility. What if you want to change the order of the items? No-can-do, unless you have this lovely little utility, called Taskbar Shuffle. Download a copy here. (Incidentally, you can rearrange the order of tabs in the Firefox browser, by clicking and dragging them.)

Firefox rules, OK?

If you buy a PC, it comes with the Internet Explorer browser built in. If you buy a Mac, the browser is Safari. But the (also free) Firefox browser, available for both platforms, is rapidly gaining popularity, and may soon overtake IE. For me, it's a no-brainer: Firefox wins hands down on just about every count. It was the first to introduce tabs, so you can have multiple pages at the ready. It puts out new updates very regularly, whereas Microsoft is always lagging months or years behind. But the clincher is the thousands of add-ons available to enhance Firefox. My favourite is DownloadHelper, which lets me download to my computer videos from sites like YouTube.

Guess it beats talking

Last summer I went to the Classical Sparks concert. I swear there were kids in the audience listening to their ipods while the concert was on. Duh! I have seen kids texting the person sitting alongside them. (I guess talking is so 20th century.) Those of you who have been to a church service in an Anglican or Catholic church will have encountered what they called the "sign of peace", where at a given sign members of the congregation actually say hello to each other, and self-consciously shake hands or even (horrors) hug one another. I'm just waiting for the time when the minister says, "And now let us share a text of peace."

Even the built-in obsolescence is not working

I reckon Harvey Norman has a big bin at their front door, so that when you buy a new computer, as you leave the store you toss it in the bin and go back and buy the upgrade. Someone should add to Murphy's laws that stuff breaks down the day after the warranty expires. I bought a tv from the Warehouse about two years ago, and the last couple of days it first started clapping out in the picture department, and then gave off very nasty noises, to the point it's now effectively non-functional. I rang a cousin who used to fix tv's, and he told me what in my heart I knew, that it would cost more to fix than to go and buy another one. (He no longer fixes tv's for this reason - I think he's now got a part-time job repairing satellites, or somesuch.) Similarly, we had a DVD player (admittedly an el cheapo from DS), for which the remote controller stopped working. They told me it would cost more to repair than to buy a new one. Actually, it would have cost more to repair just the remote than to buy a complete new DVD player including remote. I did that - I guess in reality I was buying a remote with a free DVD player thrown in. But I don't always give in so easily. About six months ago, the volume control on my electric lawnmower (bought at a garage sale) gave off a nasty puff of blue smoke followed by silence. I took the controller off and trotted down to my local lawnmower shop with it. The guy didn't even bother to look at it. The advice (you guessed it) was that they didn't make those any more, so I'd have to buy a new mower. For once I got ornery. Back home, I drilled out the sealed screws (the kind for which there is no known tool in the universe), spent the next half hour on my hands and knees finding all the bits that sprang out, shortened the cable where it had burnt out, and reassembled with some bolts instead of screws. It works a treat.

An alternative to the consumer Christmas

Once upon a time, my wider family decided Christmas had become a competition, and we needed to downsize it. So at my sister's suggestion (and if you knew my sister, you'd understand why this was a bolt from the blue) we agreed to limit spending on a gift for any one person to $5, and that purchases from second-hand shops were fine. The idea was to be creative, not stingy. Everybody entered the spirit of the idea, and it really was exciting to see what people came up with.
If Christmas has become a consumer nightmare for you, here's another suggestion for getting off the treadmill (and the video is worth watching for its own sake - it's very clever).

Finding stuff on your computer

I'm sure it's happened to you. You just know you have a document or file somewhere on your computer, but can't remember where you put it. You can try using Windows Search, but never was a search tool so badly constructed, plus it's slower than treacle in a snowstorm. Google desktop search is better, but can slow your system down terribly, and is highly invasive. Like, just where are they sending all that info gathered from the depths of your computer? Enter, riding to the rescue, Copernic Desktop Search. It's brilliant, it's fast, and I could not live without it. Even better, it's free. Get it here.

Doing it for free

One of the great things about the internet is that for almost every high-priced piece of commercial software, there is a free alternative available. In fact, some of the free offerings beat the pants off the commercial, particularly at the price! Here are some of my "can't do without" favourites:
Irfanview - an image editor (think Photoshop lite), that also doubles as a photo organiser. Has amazing capabilities for such a small footprint. Can also play many video files (eg, the movies you take on your digital camera).
Audacity - a sound editor I use all the time. You can also stretch or condense sounds (including songs) without changing pitch, move songs up or down a key, and much more.
OpenOffice.org - equivalent to Microsoft Office. Has all the bells and whistles, without the awful "ribbon" introduced by Office 2007 (and which I loathe). Has modules equivalent to Excel, PowerPoint and Access, as well as a drawing module, but the PowerPoint module is not well implemented and probably is better avoided.
EditPad Lite - a general-purpose text editor (a replacement for the Windows Notepad, but can do much more), small and compact with lots of functions.
Copernic Destop Search - I have posted separately on this.
VLC Media Player - can play all those videos and movies that Windows Media Player won't touch. Don't be fooled by its utterly basic interface.
CDex - a CD ripper (ie, copies music tracks from your CDs to your computer).
PdfEdit995 - Can create pdf files from any programme that has a print function. Can also convert pdf documents to Word format files, and much more.
Feel free to share your top favourites.

Recover forgotten passwords

One of the bugbears of my life is forgetting the passwords for websites I have signed up to. Even if you ask your browser to remember the password, the row of dots or asterisks doesn't actually tell you what the password is. And you can't copy and paste them into another field. To the rescue rides a brilliant little utility called PasswordFox. Assuming you use Firefox as your browser, just open this tiny (41kb) program and it gives you a complete list of all the sites you've signed up to, and their passwords. You can download a copy here. The downside is that anyone else visiting your machine can use PasswordFox to raid your store, and any websites you didn't want anybody else to know about will be shown in all their glory. There is an Internet Explorer equivalent, but you can go look for that yourself.

It's not your fault

If, like me, you regularly feel intimidated by technology, or that your computer is beating you up, here’s a word of encouragement: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT! The fact that you can’t make head or tail of the newest piece of software is not your fault. A huge weight of guilt fell off me when I read “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”, by Alan Cooper (I got it from the Christchurch Public Library). Subtitled “Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity”, Mr Cooper, who is an acclaimed software designer himself, makes it very clear who is at fault. It’s the faceless twits who design the stuff. Here’s the secret: geeks design to impress other geeks. People like you and me who have to use these engines-of-Satan only get in the way of their ideas of good design. Hit back. Email them and tell them in no uncertain terms what you think.