Strong Passwords

Check out this site and never forget your passwords again. Click on the link to read more.

MORE!!!

All for an iPad!!!

I ran across this article earlier and thought I might share it with everyone. I can't believe people would go to this extent to get this giant iPhone. Anyways, hit the link to read more.

Read more

Enjoy!!

Final Week at ITS

Today at ITS was used to try to wrap some loose ends on our scripting project. We got a lot of feedback from some of the techs and will be performing some more testing before our final presentation. In the next few days will be trying to implement our scripts into a test site in Luminis to see what it would look like fully implemented into the ITS homepage. That was my day at ITS today.

Spring cleaning

Here is a post from a website I read daily. This article gives some details on the best way to clean you computers and other peripherals that are hooked up.
http://lifehacker.com/5513559/give-your-computer-and-peripherals-a-spring-cleaning

Check it out!

Week 10

Today at ITS Will and myself worked on our website for the scripting project. We tied up a few loose ends and tried to get it refined as much as possible to what we wanted. After that I started a couple virus scans on customer computers to get them fixed and back to their owners. Towards the end my time at ITS I ran the shuttle with one of the other workers. All in all it was a pretty productive day at ITS this week.

Week 9

My day at ITS was pretty slow this week. Mike had nothing for us to work on and the help desk was slower than usual. During my time at ITS I proofread our scripts and made some formatting changes to our website. That pretty much sums up my day at ITS this week.

Save your money!!!

This article gives you a little more information on why not to spend big bucks on hdmi cables. Some places try to get you to purchase a three foot hdmi cable for 100 or more dollars. If you have fallen for this before save your money and stick with the cheapies.

http://lifehacker.com/5506219/why-you-should-never-pay-more-than-10-for-hdmi-cables

Hopefully you will find this helpful.

Cool Technology

Follow the link to learn some more about this awesome piece of technology.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/31/primesense-fesses-up-its-the-magic-behind-microsofts-project/

It is for a new webcam that will be coming out later this year for the Xbox, but might not be exclusively available only to the Xbox owners.

Security

Here is a good article I thought everyone should read. It's about how many peoples' passwords are at risk of being easily hacked.

http://lifehacker.com/5505400/how-id-hack-your-weak-passwords?skyline=true&s=i

Microsoft in China

While Google is trying to figure out what do in China, Microsoft is trying build its market share.
http://www.dailytech.com/Congress+Rebukes+Microsofts+Chinese+Censorship+Microsoft+Fires+Back/article17984.htm

Check out this link to read more.

Week 8

Today at ITS I worked on finishing up our website for our project. I also observed Chris as he was reinstalling program after backing up a customer pc that needed to get back to its owner. Mike also had me ask a couple people if they would like to see anything added to our ITS Help Desk page to make it better or just needing something general added. Other than these couple things it was a slow day today.

Favorite Tech Sites

I thought I might add a few tech sites that i check on a daily basis to keep up with different gadgets and various technologies.
www.engadget.com
www.lifehacker.com
www.gizmodo.com
www.dailytech.com

I really enjoy all these sites and thought someone else might want to check them out.

Week 7

Today at ITS it was a little slower than last. I worked on our scripting project for most of my time at ITS today. We almost have it finished just need to do some testing and tweak a few things. I also helped Will do the shuttle run to transfer tapes between building and deliver some mail.

Week 6

Today at ITS Mike asked me to come help install some new monitors in Founders. It was a nice change of pace to get out the office and get my hands dirty and to see some of the stuff that ITS has to do. It took us just over an hour to change out 25 monitors. The classroom had the monitors built into the desk so that was an extra challenge maneuvering around to change out the monitors. We had to be careful of what we changed down to the screws that came out of the old monitors. Each item needed to be kept a log of to see what exactly would have to go back to the lease company once the three years was up. It was a very fun experience to help out with something outside of the ITS office.

New Energy

There has been quite some hype about the bloom box. Some tech companies such as Google and Ebay are using them to cut down on their power consumption. Follow the link to learn more....
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/22/the-bloom-box-a-power-plant-for-the-home-video/. This is very cool idea and hopefully will start becoming cheaper for home consumers.

Week 5

This is my fifth week interning at ITS and have done many different things. The first thing on the agenda today was helping chris with getting a pc up and running that he had just installed a new motherboard in. We were having problems with it booting past the bios. After checking many different things on http://www.msicomputer.com/support/sup_tshoot.asp to troubleshoot our problem to find what might be the problem. After checking the beep codes on this website it was determined that we had a ram problem. We changed the ram many times before finally finding a stick that would work. The next we had to do was install Windows 7 on it. After I finished this I went on and figured out how to solve my last scripting question for my team. I finished my script and then continued on to different tasks. As my time was winding down I went on the shuttle run to move some backup tapes from one building to other and to deliver mail to some other employees. I learned a lot during my time at ITS this week.

Week 4

Today at ITS I sat at the help desk and observed the technicians that took calls. They had a wide variety of calls that customers were encountering. I also got a chance to see how the ticketing system works. I got to see how they add tickets and write down what problems the customer was having before bringing it to ITS. I also got to go with one of the techs to go to classroom to try to retrieve an item that was signed out but had not yet been returned. I got to see a little more of how the help desk operates which was a major help.

Week 3 at ITS

This week at ITS I sat and the help desk getting a feel of what type of questions are asked most frequently. The majority of questions were about getting student passwords changed. I got to see how the help desk employees answer phones and put the proper information into the system to make the tickets for the technicians to work on. It gave me a good feel of how my group needs to set up the scripts for our project too. I also got to go on a daily shuttle run to move some backup tapes. It was interesting to see what type of calls and problems that customers come into ITS to have fixed.

Week 2 at ITS

During my time at ITS this week I worked on a couple different pc's. Each computer was brought into ITS because of virus problems. On one of the pc's we used Ultimate Boot CD for Windows to scan for infected files. This tool has a built in anti-virus program that performed the scan. I have never personally used this tool before. It was good to finally use this tool since I have only seen it demoed in a class. It is a great tool if a pc connect boot to the home screen. On the other pc we used sophos anti-virus to scan and clean the computer. I had never used either anti-virus software so it was good experience for me use a couple new piece software and a new tool.

Today, during my day as an intern at ITS I worked on a few different pc's. I worked on pc's that previous interns had not completed before me during the week to get them running to test Windows 7 and Clonezilla. All three pc's had different problems to address. There was only one of the three pc's we were working on finished by the time I had to leave. It had problems that I had never encountered before. At first I could not get it to boot, it would only turn for about 3-4 seconds before turing off. It would repeat this until we cut the power too it. After trying several things we finally decided to reseat everything inside the pc and after that it seemed to run fine. The other two pc's we run hardware diagnostics on them to see if they had hardware issues since neither of them would boot properly. We used a diagnostic tool that Mike gave us on flash drive, but it crashed twice before diagnosing a problem. The other pc was a Dell and was able to run the hardware diagnostic on the partitioned drive. I had never used either of these tools so it was a good learning experience for me today.