Been at home for the past couple days going to appointments and such before i start work on Friday. Shaping up to be an eventful summer what with this new job and the LAN party I'm going to in June.
Sure to be many harrowing IT experiences over the course of the next few months
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Friday, May 4, 2007
The Latest
Went to Campus Living today and gave them my deposit and housing application. Not much else going on as the year is winding down and no one is coming into the ward with patients.
The folks and sisters seem less than pleased that I finally managed to snag a job. Apparently I was supposed to interpret their "Good luck getting a job"'s as being "You better not get a job as we expect you to be around the house this summer". No matter, time to start chasing my dreams now and frankly going home to mow lawns for less than minimum wage doesn't cut it.
The folks and sisters seem less than pleased that I finally managed to snag a job. Apparently I was supposed to interpret their "Good luck getting a job"'s as being "You better not get a job as we expect you to be around the house this summer". No matter, time to start chasing my dreams now and frankly going home to mow lawns for less than minimum wage doesn't cut it.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
IT'S OFFICIAL!
Caged is now going to be a full time employee of Campus IT during the long summer months.
This is a day to celebrate. It demands a trip to walmart and 6 bottles of seltzer! The job pays well and even though I need to pay for my own housing and living expenses, the payout is going to be great. Best part is I'm not going to be shipped back to the boonies!
I'm sure that with the number of projects I'll encounter during my employment there will be plenty of good stories to write about.
Its time to take the Dorm Room I.T. experience to the next level!
This is a day to celebrate. It demands a trip to walmart and 6 bottles of seltzer! The job pays well and even though I need to pay for my own housing and living expenses, the payout is going to be great. Best part is I'm not going to be shipped back to the boonies!
I'm sure that with the number of projects I'll encounter during my employment there will be plenty of good stories to write about.
Its time to take the Dorm Room I.T. experience to the next level!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
What's New
Well, it would seem that even though PCs get more bugs and hardware problems than imaginable I am left without patients in the ward. I need to get word of Dorm Room I.T. to the masses, now if only I could create a clever marketing plan. Something catchy that will stick in the minds of PC users on campus and come to them in times of computer disaster.
...I'll work on that
In other news, Caged is still jobless but not without hope! Campus Living and Maintenance have said they can't hire anymore summer employees. Print Services (where I currently work) only has need of workers during the academic year and can't afford to hire on another employee at this time. This is most depressing as I'm not looking forward to heading back to the middle of nowhere that is Western Massachusetts. Working on some other angles here on campus though, by continuing to inquire at the campus warehouse if they need help (they still can't tell me) and applying at the campus I.T. Department. And should the worst happen and I go home, at least there will always be lawns that need to be trimmed.
Until next time!
-Caged
...I'll work on that
In other news, Caged is still jobless but not without hope! Campus Living and Maintenance have said they can't hire anymore summer employees. Print Services (where I currently work) only has need of workers during the academic year and can't afford to hire on another employee at this time. This is most depressing as I'm not looking forward to heading back to the middle of nowhere that is Western Massachusetts. Working on some other angles here on campus though, by continuing to inquire at the campus warehouse if they need help (they still can't tell me) and applying at the campus I.T. Department. And should the worst happen and I go home, at least there will always be lawns that need to be trimmed.
Until next time!
-Caged
Saturday, April 28, 2007
More bugs
Neighbor dropped in saying his laptop was sluggish. Usual routine pulls up some interesting spyware and tracking cookies...usual stuff more or less. Noticed his firewall was shut off, which was one of the bug's doing no doubt. The fun part was that it took 3 programs to clean out all traces of the infections, and to add to that, a number of bugs seemed to be in software that came pre-installed from HP. Yet another reason to be critical of any trial software one finds pre-installed with a new computer. Returned it to him with a clean bill of health and am ready for some seltzer. He tried giving me some money for the work, but I'm not comfortable with that yet. Still worry that any computer I touch is going to turn into a smouldering pile of debris the second they take it back and turn it on.
I'll keep the Dorm Room I.T. free for now.
All in all a successful night and once again my free cocktail does the trick.
I'll keep the Dorm Room I.T. free for now.
All in all a successful night and once again my free cocktail does the trick.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Audio/Visual Conversion Tools
No patients have entered the ward in the past couple days (how dull) so I'm left to wander aimlessly when not wearing out my mouse on MissionRed. I have a TV Tuner in my desktop rig so I am always recording and watching different shows. Mostly just movies (Watched Men of Honor last night on FX) and while I do have a dvd burner, I am rather poor being in college so the dvd's get expensive. After numerous trials and errors, I've managed to find a number of different tools that can convert between audio and video formats and shrink down these mamoth 3 gig videos often to under a gig.
The RAD Video Tools (http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm)
This is a great program for converting video into an .AVI file through the use of a bunch of different codecs including, but not limited to, DivX and XviD. It gives a lot of different options for rescaling and altering other aspects fo the video file in question. If you should so choose, you can also opt to only convert either the audio or the cideo seperately. (Meaning if you really just want the audio from that video you downloaded, you can rip it out with this program) One last note I find particularly interesting is that while Rad does not specify it is capable of doing this, I have discovered that should one open a .FLV video and convert only the audio, you can get the audio out of it. Useful for sites that enclose audio files in .flv format.
Auto Gordian Knot (http://www.autogk.me.uk)
Useful program for converting video files into compressed avi's with DivX and XviD codecs. Not as many options as The Rad Video Tools, but gives the nice option of a simple job queue, shutdown after completion, and a compression percentage option.
More to come...
The RAD Video Tools (http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm)
This is a great program for converting video into an .AVI file through the use of a bunch of different codecs including, but not limited to, DivX and XviD. It gives a lot of different options for rescaling and altering other aspects fo the video file in question. If you should so choose, you can also opt to only convert either the audio or the cideo seperately. (Meaning if you really just want the audio from that video you downloaded, you can rip it out with this program) One last note I find particularly interesting is that while Rad does not specify it is capable of doing this, I have discovered that should one open a .FLV video and convert only the audio, you can get the audio out of it. Useful for sites that enclose audio files in .flv format.
Auto Gordian Knot (http://www.autogk.me.uk)
Useful program for converting video files into compressed avi's with DivX and XviD codecs. Not as many options as The Rad Video Tools, but gives the nice option of a simple job queue, shutdown after completion, and a compression percentage option.
More to come...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
The Laptop and the BSoD's
So my most recent computer encounter was quite interesting and in some ways impressed me. The guy comes in saying that his system keeps crashing and he's been told he has a virus by Windows Live OneCare (I think that is what its called). He didn't manage to grab the bug name before it crashed again and was now in my room asking em to fix it. I won't lie, it made my day, its just how I roll. So i go about the usual checks, it crashes pretty much every time you boot normally, so I did the safe mode routine and found out a number of things about this guy's system. For one thing, his anti-virus had expired a while ago, he was using the standard windows firewall, and had only one anti-spyware program. (That's asking for trouble) I set about my business installing The Anti-Bug Free Software Cocktail, removed what was left of McAfee, and gave him all the relevant updates.
It took me a while to track it down, but he somehow contracted a variant of the Nuwar email virus and he wasn't able to prevent the infection because his virus definitions were out of date. Called him up and he was all set. This made my day as the people I consulted when trying to fix it were all telling me he had to do a clean format as a number of system programs such as System Restore, Internet Explorer, and Search were all toasted along with the anti-virus. System Restore was gotten back by uninstalling the trial version of Norton Ghost he never configured or used. Search and IE came back to life after i removed McAfee, the Virus files, and ran the system file checker (SFC.exe)
Another job done, Dorm Room I.T. kicks back for some UT2004 and MissionRed
Until next time...
~Caged
It took me a while to track it down, but he somehow contracted a variant of the Nuwar email virus and he wasn't able to prevent the infection because his virus definitions were out of date. Called him up and he was all set. This made my day as the people I consulted when trying to fix it were all telling me he had to do a clean format as a number of system programs such as System Restore, Internet Explorer, and Search were all toasted along with the anti-virus. System Restore was gotten back by uninstalling the trial version of Norton Ghost he never configured or used. Search and IE came back to life after i removed McAfee, the Virus files, and ran the system file checker (SFC.exe)
Another job done, Dorm Room I.T. kicks back for some UT2004 and MissionRed
Until next time...
~Caged
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