The Weekly Geek

First and foremost, with any disaster, DO NOT SELF DEPLOY! The only exception is if “it” occurred in your hometown.

I know you want to help, I know your heart goes out to the families in trouble, so does mine, however, please don’t burden them with your presence. Why? Well, what is your plan? Pack up like you were going to Eureka Springs? Really?

I may not be the foremost authority on these situations, however, I volunteer frequently and even more frequently I train. Training is essential, training is survival as my friend Matt Canovi says. If you just pack as normal, where will you stay? Who will feed and water you? Have you had your shots (Tetanus), do you have proper work gloves, proper work boots, clothing? Can you work with people you never met? Take orders from those who you don’t know? Where will you go to the restroom? Shower up? The questions can be endless. [Read more →]

In Office 2007, when you go to save a file, there was a default list of locations on the left side of the pop-up window. That used to be called the “My Places” bar, it is now labeled “Favorite Links”.

If you create many documents and you need to save them in a location that is not listed (Such as a network drive, a mapped drive, a USB drive…), it gets to be tiresome to constantly click through to get where you want to save.

You can add a location in Windows Vista or 7 easily. The list of shortcuts under the Favorite Links is located under the username/Links folder. The username is your logon name. [Read more →]

Even though it is the End-of-life for Office 2003 and Office 2002 / XP has already been reached, I know many of you still use it.

If you use Office XP (2002) or 2003 you’ll find it very handy to be able to customize the contents of the “Places” bar to include shortcuts to your own commonly used folders.

The Places bar is the left hand pane that appears when you select “File” then the “Open” menu. It normally contains Favorites, My Documents and other system folders.

First from within any Office application (Word, Excel …) select “File” from the menu bar and then “Open” from the drop down list.
Next, from the Explorer pane browse to the folder you want to include and select it by highlighting it. Then from the Open dialog box click on “Tools” and finally select “Add to My Places”. That’s it, you are done.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week!

End of support for Windows XP and Office 2003 is coming on April 8, 2014.

This means Microsoft will no longer make and distribute updates and patches for either product. They will also not provide tech support after that date.

Research suggest SMBs (5 to 249 Computers) are significantly behind Enterprise and Consumer populations in replacing Windows XP systems. About 40% of US SMBs are still on XP and Office 2003. According to SpiceWorks over 70% of their user base is still on XP.

The new versions of Office (2013 and 365) are NOT compatible with either XP or Vista. [Read more →]

Recently a friend of mine asked my why I volunteer, specifically she was asking about the time I spent volunteering in Citizens Corps and CERT. Here is what I told her.

Why I volunteer? And Why with CERT? I could probably write a Novella about it.

As you might remember, I was raised on the Gulf Coast and hurricanes and tropical storms were a constant threat. I learned early in life, that if a neighbor or different area of town had damage and destruction, it was our duty to go and help. At 8 years old I was replacing drywall, patching / redoing roofs. When I turned 16 I bought a car and used my dad’s trailer to haul off debris. Sometimes I was paid by the home-owners sometimes not.

[Read more →]