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This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.

Friday, August 20, 2004
 
Removing Spyware

A much more detailed article about removing spyware than any of the random bits of information I've talked about here. A good thing to keep handy, and pass around!

Link via Lockergnome.

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You and end-users

Interesting little article about dealing with end-users, full of stories about miscommunication between end-users and IT folks. I would have to agree with the conclusion:

"Often, end users blame IT for network or computer problems, simply because they don’t know what goes on behind the scene and what causes problems. But sometimes, miscommunication on the part of the end user or the IT tech can be what leads to trouble. Working harder to understand each other may take effort, but it can help keep everybody’s blood pressure lower, and wouldn’t that be a great thing?"

That is true, and it is very much a two-way street. I try to explain what's going on to people, and I try to always include instructions on how to handle things so that they don't have problems to begin with, but some end-users simply don't listen. They rage at me to fix their problem, even when I've given them written instructions on exactly how to fix it! It's frustrating, and it's very easy sometimes to not be a very good communicator in the face of that or to not really listen to what people are asking me and simply do what I think should be done. That doesn't always lead to a good solution. :)

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Thursday, August 19, 2004
 
Freeware

Thanks to a pointer fro the Office Weblog, I found this interesting OS News article about using just freeware to get things done on a Windows PC. Most of that stuff is familiar to me, but some isn't. That'll give me some new things to think about. :)

Speaking of which, I need to update that list of "freeware I use" in the blog template. There's some new stuff that I don't have listed down there!

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Blog This problem

Am I the only one having this problem? When I use the BlogThis! button on the Google toolbar in IE, the link is formatted incorrectly. For example, if I were to use that to link to yahoo.com, I wind up with a link to http://www.mikemcbrideonline.com/http://www.yahoo.com. I then have to go back and retype the HTML to get the link to show up correctly.

I guess I'll go set Sharpreader to use Mozilla as the default browser when I'm reading and pointing to news items, since that's usually how I wind up in an IE window to begin with.

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Resume Tips

Noting this for myself, and any other IT folks who might be looking for something new. Jeremy Wright gathered up a bunch of resume tips.

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Wednesday, August 18, 2004
 
More XP SP2 experiences

Seems that SANS is collecting user experiences with SP2 as well. At last look they had collected 690 messages! I think that ought to give you a fairly good recap of what's going on out in the wild!

Link via Lockergnome

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Tuesday, August 17, 2004
 
Olympics

I think maybe it's time to change how the networks broadcast the Olympics. I know this year it seems as though the ratings aren't what they used to be, and I think it has a whole lot to do with the fact that they are showing things well after they've already happened. Come on, this is the internet age, that's not going to cut it. Let me give you an example:

I happened to be home this afternoon instead of at work. I had the Olympics coverage on NBC on, because there's really nothing else on in the afternoon and I wanted some background noise. They were showing the semifinal heats of the Men's 800 meter swimming relay. They showed the Americans winning one heat, the Australians the other, and throughout they kept hyping the final which was going to be aired during prime time tonight. Only problem was, I was online during this time and had already seen that the Americans won the final. All that effort at creating drama and getting me to tune in tonight, was short circuited by the fact that the dramatic event they were hyping had already occurred. I saw the results online, and then I saw analysis of the results on ESPN, all before NBC showed me the actual event! Why would I waste my time watching it tonight?

This isn't 1980, or even 1992, there are too many places to read about what's going on right now, to expect us to tune in 12 hours after the fact the watch something. It's old news by the time NBC gets around to showing it.

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Trillian 3 beta

The fine folks at Cerulean Studios are looking for early bird beta testers for the new Trillian beta. Details in the link.

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Monday, August 16, 2004
 
Microsoft Lists Apps Affected by XP SP2

Thanks to Microsoft Watch we now have a pointer to a KB article listing apps that they know will have problems with SP2.

Gee Symantec Corporate edition 8 is on there. That's one of ours, although the work-around seems simple enough. Guess I'll find out for sure soon enough.

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