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January 28, 2011
Office 2007: PDFs
Office 2007? Weird man, it's just weird.
After over a decade of normalcy from MS, they change ... everything? And why? To look cooler. Meh.
So I had to ask for help to convert a Word document to PDF. Didn't really wanna download an app to do it, so here's what I learned:
Word 2007 can do this itself.
Click the circley-roundy-buttony thing in the upper-left hand corner.
Click Save-As.
Select .PDF document, and off you go.
Simple? Yeah. Finally. Finding it? Harder.
Posted by ellism at 8:45 AM | Comments (0)
Ubuntu: Netbook
My Dell Mini 9 was having problems with the browser, updates and was still using the pre-built OS from Dell.
Time to upgrade.
Which version of Ubuntu should I try?
I only have an 8GB solid-state drive ...
Ubuntu.com ... downloads....
Wait! Ubuntu Netbook ?? Cute, cute and OK. Let's give it a whirl...
So you download the .ISO (it's only 700 MB...)
You use a third-party app to set it up on a flash drive.
You install, and voila!
OK, so it's not QUITE as fast as I'd hoped... for a NetBook edition. It still came with a bunch of stuff I don't want (Evolution email, social networking, etc...) but I scanned a few forums to figure out how to get rid of those.
The hardest thing was getting my wireless to work. The drivers did not install, but did detect "from a third-party", but the 18 times I tried to install them they just gave an error. So I looked up the error, and tried and tried and tried and cleared and refreshed and all kinds of stuff.
About 15 minutes later after my 7th reboot, they magically install, so all is well there...
The left-bar allows you to "pin" apps (or remove them) to it. It's similar to the Mac/Win7 docking.
Utilities were a bit challenging to find at first, but that went OK. I got skype installed and tested my webcam and mic. Boot time is about 18seconds (from button to desktop). Mostly that's solid state, but I love it.
The button in the upper-left hand corner is odd. It takes you to an app-grouping screen that seems useful, but most of the time just confuses me...
I gotta play with it more, but so far I'm pretty happy. Performance seems to be slightly better after removing the extra apps and turning off the "startup programs".
I wish I had more time to really push it, hook it up to my 28" HDMI monitor, etc...
That will come with time. At this point Skype, "office", terminal and wireless all work.
Posted by ellism at 8:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2011
Everbridge Parents
Currently, we have 539 "parents" registered in our Everbridge system.
Our plan is to contact each of them and have them confirm that they are, in fact, a parent of a student who is still attending WOU.
I've exported all of their contact info - during the next few weeks I hope to setup a process to contact each of them via email and confirm their status.
"Parents" who did not register an email address will have to be called via phone, but that is a very small minority.
Doing this will not only remove some extra contacts, but will help to focus contacts to those still associated with WOU.
Posted by ellism at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
wouTV v1.0 beta
The time draweth nigh.
woutv is nearly complete.
We have an issue with the featured videos, some formatting to copy and enabling "click-throughs" ( the ability for folks to post video on other pages, that brings them to wouTV and plays it here).
Danielle has done an outstanding job on the graphics and look-n-feel. Eventually Ron will have to port it to PHP, but that will enable Danielle to have full control over the page in the future.
It's a great project and Bill is very excited about it!
Posted by ellism at 9:39 AM | Comments (0)
January 7, 2011
Minimum Wage
This is just a short update.
Student workers who used to make $8.40, got bumped to $8.50/hr effective 12/12/10.
Of course, I wrote the algorithm, tested it, ran it and was happy. Until I realized that I should have said anyone making LESS THAN $8.50/hr...
And I had closed my script.
And I was cranky.
So I re-wrote it (shorter this time), and fixed the 2! (count them, 2) folks who made more than $8.40, but less than $8.50.
Sheesh.
Posted by ellism at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
Moving ye' olde Web Server
So Ron and I moved Oracle's web server from one box to another. Ross had done all the prep work, and Ron and I would have done it in no time, but we ran into some issues.
1. You can't use ports on Unix < 1000 (aka port 80 and 443) unless you are root :(
2. Even if you are root, a very specific file has to be owned by root (not oracle) for it to even start.
Anyway, with setup from Ross, and help/configs from Ron we got it rolling.
Overall it was a very smooth transition. I'm not sure I've heard a thing about it from the SRD.
On a side note, the most complicated issue I expected was the Oracle Wallet (and it's Certs), but it turns out that you can simply copy the folder over an POOF! it works ....
That's pretty slick and saved us a lot of time.
Posted by ellism at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)