I don’t know why I let it bother me, but I am constantly at a loss as to why people skip the first, and most important part of the problem solving process: identify the problem.
Problems generally begin with frustration over something that’s not happening as expected. Often, people will take that frustration and immediately start throwing solutions at it. In their haste, they aren’t taking a half a step back to look at their frustration and ask “why is this happening?” If you do stop to ask that question, you can isolate the root problem and fix it at the source.
I could be wrong in my assessment, but if my car gets a rust spot on it, I don’t slap some paint on it. Instead, I sand out the rust, prime it, and repaint the small area. If I don’t, the rust will just spread. Oh, and you might ask “what if I don’t want to spend that much time right now?” For me the answer is to just leave it be. Yes, it looks worse, but I would rather have a problem I can see than one that’s out of sight and out of mind.
Different strokes for different folks though I suppose.
June 19th, 2008
Posted by
josh |
General |
no comments
This is my first post with Windows Live Writer. So far, this tool looks pretty sweet. The main point I’m liking is the WYSWYG editor that imported my site theme. Now I am posting this in exactly the look I will get when I publish it. Well… maybe. After all, I haven’t hit publish yet!
Here’s a screenshot of the editor, so let’s see if it matches in the end.
March 1st, 2008
Posted by
josh |
General |
one comment
One of the most useful little utilities I have found. Ctrl+Alt+Launch (or Cal as it is usually referred to) is a shortcut utility that allows you to quickly launch programs on your computer. Here’s how it works:
- Click Ctrl+Alt (or designate your own shortcut key combo) and a small prompt box will come up.
- Start typing in the name of the shortcut you created, any program in your start menu, a web address, or a path on your file system and let the autocomplete do it’s job. You can even search the web!
That’s it! No more browsing through folders, no more digging through the start menu, it’s all done for you. Even if you don’t setup shortcuts this little utility is useful.
Did I say little? I meant it. Despite the program doing some background indexing, it rarely ties up processing cycles, and only uses 3MB of RAM on my computer.
For such a small program it is amazingly configurable. You can get to the configuration through the taskbar icon and setup many options from running on startup, turning features on and off, and even configuring 3 different web searches!
All that made a useful program for me with very little work, but what about the shortcuts? Shortcuts allow you to setup an alias for a program to launch it. Of course, there are times that you want to launch more than one program at a time. For this you can setup a keyword on each of these shortcuts to launch it. My favorite is one called “startup” that simply opens my e-mail and all the apps I generally want to check shortly after sitting down to the computer.
Ctrl+Alt+Launch is a powerful and easy-to-use utility that once you start using you will be hooked. Best of all, it’s free!
February 8th, 2008
Posted by
josh |
General |
4 comments
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. That’s mainly because I’ve been busy launching my software and trying my best to run myself completely out of funds. Both of which I am being fairly successful at. However, I did want to stop and point out another of my works.
As an IT Manager, one issue that was always difficult was tracking software licensing. I just launched my new software DGard Software Compliance Manager but more importantly in blog talk, I have created the Software Licensing for Small Businesses 101 course. This course goes over the basic features of a license agreement, and also goes through a strategy for tracking licenses and staying in compliance. It is an easy course of about 7 lessons that take around 10 minutes each.
I hope it’s helpful, and sorry it is not a part of this blog. Maybe some day I will add it in though.
January 18th, 2007
Posted by
josh |
General, The IT Manager |
no comments
This post has been revived from the archives by request.
I use Listviews a lot in my programming, and one issue I have had is that the autoresize is for either the header or the content, but not both. So, I finally created a function I add to fit whichever of the two is the widest.
Private Sub BestFit(ByRef lvw As ListView)
Dim lvCol As ColumnHeader
‘ loop through the columns
For Each lvCol In lvw.Columns
‘ set the width to the column width
lvCol.AutoResize(ColumnHeaderAutoResizeStyle.ColumnContent)
‘ record the width
Dim width As Integer = lvCol.Width
‘ set the width to the header width
lvCol.AutoResize(ColumnHeaderAutoResizeStyle.HeaderSize)
‘ if the original width is greater than the new width, revert to it
If width > lvCol.Width Then
lvCol.AutoResize(ColumnHeaderAutoResizeStyle.ColumnContent)
End If
Next
End Sub
November 28th, 2006
Posted by
josh |
Programming |
one comment
One common complaint I always heard with desktop computers is that “my computer sounds like a jet taking off”. Oh how many times I heard that. And of course it was not one of my favorite things to deal with because… well… I don’t care to be a techie. Yes, I know the stuff and sleep walk through it, but I don’t want to do it. Of course, you can’t say that to your user who is already frustrated, so I generally opted for one of my favorite lines:
“Excellent! I know the fans are working then!”
Well, that’s the end of my story. A friend just reminded me of it and I thought I would share. For all you techies who found this post on a search and want to fix the problem, here is the solution:
Sounding like a jet taking off is generally a fan. You can get it from a CD not spinning down but that makes a very obvious sound. You first need to figure out which fan it is. To do this while the computer is running stick your hand over the fan in the back. If it muffles the sound (you’ll notice a big difference) you have a bad power supply fan. Order a new power supply. If not, it is probably the processor fan. You can generally get a new fan and not need a processor. If you are reading this, then opening the power supply and replacing the fan will cost the company more in your time than it will for buying the fan. Plus, there’s some dangerous stuff in that power supply, so just stay out. If you are still unsure on the fan, you can shut the computer down and let the fans come to a halt. Then block one of the fans from spinning up and start the computer up. Once spinning the fans are really dangerous so don’t ever try to stop one that’s already going. However, they don’t have a lot of acceleration power so if it doesn’t get to start right away it won’t hurt (just don’t hold it for an overly long time). If the sound isn’t there, then you found the bad fan. Let it go and see if you hear the sound.
An alternative to replacing is to stick lithium grease in the bearings for the fan. This is once again something I would rarely mess with unless you are really hard up for cash and know what you’re doing because it’s going to take time and it’s hard to get it in the right place. Also note that these days computers are starting to contain more and more fans. Be sure to identify the fan that is the problem.
October 31st, 2006
Posted by
josh |
The IT Manager |
3 comments
A friend was just asking me online if I use stored procedures for everything in my current application. The answer was yes, and it deserves noting that there are two good reasons to be in this habit.
The first reason is rather obvious, they are far more secure against SQL Injection Attacks. I don’t feel like going into that right now, so I have provided the link for those who want to know more.
The second reason is that it seperates the database schema from the application. This makes it easier to deal with changes to the database. It eliminates the need to dig through your application and find all of the instances where an ad hoc SQL statement is accessing the database.
I just ran into an issue in my application that is causing me to change databases from SQL Express to Access. I’m not thrilled about it because I feel I am taking a step back in technology, but it’s about what the customer wants, not what I want and in this case they want an install that doesn’t require them to load SQL Express. I currently have 59 stored procedures and 2 views I am converting to Access. In my application those procedures are called multiple times each. Thanks to my use of stored procedures though, I will simply be changing the database connection in my application and cleaning up a few small issues that will be inevitable.
Whether you are security conscious or not, using stored procedures (or in Access, queries) can be extremely helpful. I would recommend using them wherever you need a query. If you don’t have the option to use them, create a class in your application to at least group all of your SQL code together. You can ensure on your own that your security is right, and you can more efficiently manage your SQL statements (although stored procedures are still better).
October 31st, 2006
Posted by
josh |
The Software Developer |
no comments
Here I sit, once again typing into one of these blogs. I’ve done this several times before and each time I have gotten sick of it. People always tell me that I need to make my blog all about a single topic, and that I need to be very standardized about it. Well, that’s not going to happen. I actually have several completely unrelated topics I’ll be blogging about, and then, if something else comes to mind I will throw that in there too. Anyway, I hope at least someone enjoys my babbling.
October 15th, 2006
Posted by
josh |
General |
3 comments
