Your personal year in review
December 29, 2006
So what did you accomplish this year? Did you grow? Maybe you don’t think you’ve improved at all. Carve some time out this week and do the following:
- What new skills do you have?
- Is the quality of your work better?
- Look at your writing style — have you become better in terms of clarity and accuracy and conveying your thoughts?
- How are your people skills? Was it a rocky year or did you build confidence among your team?
- What do your superiors think of your performance?
- Organize your tracks by artist or whatever your preference is.
- Delete songs you don’t like — Seriously, get rid of those tracks. If you rate your tracks from 1-5 stars, delete all the 1-2 star tracks.
- If you have different versions of “Little Drummer Boy,” keep only the one you like the most and delete the rest.
- I’m not locked into running only Windows XP SP2
- It’s easy to make a backup copy of the virtual OS file to roll back to if something becomes corrupt.
- I can switch easily between using my Windows and Mac applications.
- Data can be copied to the clip board in Windows then pasted in OS X and vice versa.
- Getting used to using Shift-Ctrl to simulate a right-click functions.
- Switching out of Parallels full screen desktop to access Mac OS desktop — the Ctrl-Option shortcut sometimes doesn’t work the first time. There is also a delay before it does.
- Sometimes I can trigger an open Mac application to appear over the full screen Windows Parallels desktop. Usually by using Command-Tab.
- To copy text from Windows and paste to the Mac, must use Ctrl-x in Windows then Command-v in Mac.
- Even after near daily use for two months, my fingers haven’t instinctively gotten used to which keyboard shortcuts to use when jumping back and forth between OS. That might be a legitimate benefit of working exclusively via Bootcamp.
- For convenience, I was able to easily set up a Shared folder so all the files you touch whether from within Windows or Mac OS are saved in same Mac Documents folder.
- Using the CD player is sometimes frustrating. If I want to install software from CD to the Windows environment, I’ll usually reboot my Mac (without any CD in the drive bay), run Parallels, log into Windows and then insert the application CD.
Don’t be afraid to criticize yourself. It’s important in order to create your goals for the new year.
Good luck!
-Roland
Remove plasma tv screen after image
December 29, 2006
Heard an awesome tip on DL.tv. If you have a plasma TV and fear you have an image burned into the display, good news is that it is most likely a clearable “after image”, and not permanent burn in.
Example: The expensive plasma screen in my employer’s conference room has a ridiculously large Microsoft “Windows” logo appearing in the middle of the screen, still visible when the screen is turned off. Apparently someone left the TV on and the Windows shut down screen on overnight.
To fix this problem, newer TVs now have a built-in screen cleaning function. Another option is to run full-size video for 4+ hours — the key being full motion video that fills the entire screen, not letterbox with black bars at the top and bottom.
Hope this helps you.
Time to delete your holiday music audio files
December 27, 2006
Yeah, the December holidays are over! Time to delete all those songs you ripped to your hard drive and reclaim some drive space. I was suprised to find nearly a GB of Christmas music on my computer. (That was about 12 albums ripped at 192 kbps.)
Easy steps:
Once your organized and culled the herd, simply burn the remaining files to a DVD/CD and file it away until next year.
Then you can import it all again next December.
Be brutal and get rid of that unnecessary clutter!
Thieves outside your house
December 23, 2006
Star Ledger reported “Here’s a tip: Leave trash collectors’ holiday gifts alone”
A homeowner spotted two jerks stealing tips and gifts left for the garbage men. His actions resulted in the police arresting the scoundrels.
Chatham folks are good to their garbage collectors, leaving between $20 and $60 in envelopes taped to the lids or hats and gloves, sometimes cookies and, rarely, beer or liquor, police said.
The suspects, it turns out, were well-aware of the generosity of Chatham residents. Both men are former employees of the company that handles the town’s trash and were allegedly stealing from their former co-workers.
This is a typical example of why you shouldn’t leave anything outside your house. Don’t leave tips outside — try to hand it to the person. Never put your outgoing mail in your mailbox. It’s just an invitation for thieves. They can be gone so fast you’d never know they were there. Odds are in their favor that no one will notice them or do anything about it.
-Roland
Upside down Christmas tree
December 22, 2006
It may be too late to order for this Christmas, but I’d imagine that next week the fine folks at Hammacher Schlemmer will be cutting the $599 price tag on this upside down Christmas tree.
Review: Running Windows XP/2000 on my Mac with Parallels
December 20, 2006
It’s time to buy a Mac. There are no more excuses. This year, two great solutions emerged to run Windows on Mac hardware for those who hesitate to switch to a Mac.
Bootcamp vs. Parallels
Apple’s Bootcamp and Nova Development’s Parallels Desktop for Mac are specifically for Intel-based Macs. During 2006, Apple switched its entire line of desktop and notebook computers to the Intel chips. You cannot use Bootcamp or Parallels on an Apple PowerPC iBook, iMac or Mac-mini.
| Bootcamp | Parallels | |
| OS Support? | “A bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions.)” | Supports Windows Vista/XP/2000/NT/95, various flavors of Linux and other operating systems |
| Boot: | Dual boot. You can only run Windows XP or Mac OS X at one time. | Run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously! |
| Create a drive partition? | Yes | No |
| Cost: | Free | $79 |
The investment is well worth it to me. To me, the benefits of running Parallels instead of Bootcamp are:
Run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously!
My Situation (work-at-home scenario):
I typically run on the Mac desktop: Photoshop, Thunderbird (personal email), iChat (Instant Messaging), iTunes (music/podcasts), Transmit (FTP) and Skype (VoIP), Toast, iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band.
I launch Parallels and run my “business applications” in Windows XP: Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Visio and Project. I use VPN to access critical files at work.
In the Windows environment I run both Windows Media Player and Quicktime Basic so I don’t have to jump back to Mac if I encounter media files. Rather than use the default Web browsers, I exclusively use Firefox 2.0 on both Windows and Mac OS. It allows me to manage my bookmarks in a central file. A Firefox plug-in also allows for integrating del.icio.us bookmarks in the same manner.
I don’t bother installing Photoshop in the Windows environment or the Office suite in the OS X environments. They’d just be redundant and take up unnecessary file space.
Parallels isn’t perfect, but it’s extremely close and hasn’t let me down.
The most annoying things I experience using Parallels are:
Productivity-wise:
Waiting to reboot between OS X and Windows is time waster when using Bootcamp. When using Parallels, all apps are accessible at the same time–a huge time saver!
Toggling between the operating systems can get a bit confusing, especially when recalling keyboard shortcuts. For example, in OS X you use Command-Tab to cycle through open Mac applications, while in Parallels, you use Option-Tab to cycle through open Windows applications.
Regardless of whether you use Bootcamp or Parallels, installing any Windows OS is a huge time waster. Be ready to spend 1-2 hours of installing, rebooting, downloading security updates and patches, and rebooting over and over and over again. Then you can start installing your anti-virus (Norton or free AVG), anti-spyware (Windows Defender, SpyBot, AdAware), then finally your daily use software (Office, Firefox, etc).
By the way, Apple warns:
“Word to the Wise — Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.”
I’ve had flawless installations of Windows XP Pro, Windows 2000 Pro and Ubuntu Linux.
Ultimately, I think Parallels is the better solution over Bootcamp.
So switch to Mac and run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously!
Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and NewMediaSandbox.com.
©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.
Humor: Fitting a “flat” screen TV in any room
December 17, 2006
Found this helpful advice at Biboz.net. Get that flat screen TV look in any room.
Article: Medical Identity Theft: Providence Health’s Serious Pain
December 17, 2006
Baseline Magazine reports: Medical Identity Theft: Providence Health’s Serious Pain
“A phone call that Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2006 brought news that every CIO dreads. Someone had stolen a computer bag out of a systems analyst’s car four nights before. Gone were 10 computer disks and tapes holding information on what would turn out to be more than 365,000 patients—everything from Social Security numbers and birth and death dates to diagnoses, prescriptions and insurance numbers. Data on doctors was missing, too, including Medicare and Medicaid numbers, state license numbers, names, addresses and phone numbers.”
Employees were foolish and reckless with how they handled the health records…
“At most facilities across the company, employees back up data daily to tapes and disks and send it off to be stored in a secured building, O’Brien says. But at the company’s Home and Community Services unit in Portland, which cares for frail and elderly patients in their homes, employees took the backups home themselves, in their own cars, she says.”
These foolish and careless actions have a significant impact on the company as well. Not only has their reputation been badly damaged, but…
“Providence has spent $7 million so far responding to the breach. “This was not a cheap mistake,” CIO O’Brien says.”
Ultimately consumers end up paying the bill for all this nonsense that could have easily been prevented.
Related Links:
Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional concerned about how companies handle personally identifiable information. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.
©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.
Shopper tip: How to buy a new camcorder
December 16, 2006
Only a week left to get a new camcorder to capture the holiday magic in your household. Here’s how to buy a new camcorder. I hope you find it useful.
Article: UCLA break-in puts data on 800,000 at risk
December 13, 2006
Cnet News.com reports: UCLA break-in puts data on 800,000 at risk
Administrators discovered November 21 that the database had been compromised, according to a letter dated Tuesday that was posted to the university’s Web site (PDF here). The hacker had exploited a previously undetected software flaw and gained access to the database from October 2005 until the discovery
UCLA’s security breach is among the largest to hit a university. Earlier this year, for example, Western Illinois University suffered a hacker attack that compromised the personal information of 180,000 people, and Ohio University found three of its servers, one of which contained 137,000 Social Security numbers, had been compromised.
Last year, the University of Southern California suffered a security breach of a database containing personal information on 275,000 applicants over an eight-year period.
Related Links:
