As the self-titled Head of Special Projects, I get a lot of oddball things thrown at me with the instructions to make them work flawlessly. This has allowed me to experiment with a lot of different things and have a good puzzle every now and then. These can be fun projects as they allow for deviation from the sometimes tedious tasks, but they are also frustrating because you … [Read more...]
Epson TM-88IV Documentation
Epson has a serious lack of documentation for its TM-88III and TM-88IV printers. We have been replacing any failing TM-88III printers with network-based TM-88IV printers. The IV model is much faster and the network form is more reliable than the USB or Parallel versions we have had in the past. The USB/Parallel versions were hooked up to one machine and typically shared through … [Read more...]
Dia
Dia is an open-source program that allows one to easily create diagrams and flowcharts. Rivaling Microsoft Visio, it's free and easy to work with. It has more than a dozen templates that allow you to grab some pre-made shapes including computers, electrical, logic, CISCO, isometric maps, and flowchart icons. It's a light-weight application that's just nice to keep handy. You … [Read more...]
Gary Strawn’s Location Changer
To install Gary Strawn's location changer: 1. Copy the Oracle ODBC driver setup (060621CARLIOrclInstall.exe) locally and run through the install as an admin following the instructions located in the Oracle directory. 2. Once the install completes, change the service SID to the current SID instead of VGER under Oracle OraHome92 Net Manager and save. 3. Install and … [Read more...]
Making the Ultimate Backup Script for your users (or even yourself)
Computers are great at repetitive tasks whereas humans get bored and might skip some steps every now and then. This was the exact situation I found myself in while doing machine replacements. Every time I sit down to replace a machine, I would end up copying the same things from a user's machine and writing down the same info in order to transfer things to the new machine. In … [Read more...]