Daniel Voyles

For years and years the major publishing companies have controlled how we and our children are educated. Paying an outrageous price for books has just been a fact of life with these corporations doing what they can to educate, but at a profit. From the books your kindergarten teacher used to the overpriced Linux books you buy in college,  this problem never seems to end.

Until now.

Frankly, I have been wondering why schools keep blowing through budgets by buying these overpriced novelty items. With the advent of the Internet, free operating systems, Linux running on oooooold PCs, free ‘Course Management Software’, and willingness of people like me to help schools – WHY?

Honestly, I can’t answer that question. I can offer some possible reasons, but I’m not the one making decisions at our schools. Perhaps too many educators are stuck in the rut of using the same way things have always been as their methodology. Perhaps the colleges don’t want to give up their revenue stream, as hypothesized here.

When I took Cisco courses over the past couple of years, there were no printed texts. Every bit of the curriculum, save for hands-on, was online. There is very little reason that schools could not move to the same format. The books are available if need be, but access to the world wide web negates that need.

Yes, I know that not everyone has a PC at home. However, quite a few do have one that they goof with quite a bit. Shouldn’t they have the ability to use it to study as well? Even without Internet access, CDs could be burnt, library access is available, and there are study halls.

Maybe I’m too much into wishful thinking, but it seems we are due for change. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

El yay. I finally got my AAS degree in the mail today. I now have proof that I spent two years fine-tuning my IT skills with official curriculum. Rend Lake definitely has a great program in my opinion. The instructors go out of their way to help you learn material.

While at RLC I picked up quite a bit of knowledge about networking, VoIP, and LAN/WAN design. While most of my Windows support experience was at my job/internship, that’s normal. Most of IT is basic knowledge with a lot of real world experience thrown into the mix.

It was a strenuous path to keep going sometimes, but well worth the trip. I met a lot of great people in the program too. Most of us are still in contact via the various social networks. Perhaps we can all have a reunion at some point.

I have to say that I’m kind of proud of myself for attaining a degree. Yes, I know an Associate degree isn’t a huge accomplishment, but it’s what I’ve got and I worked hard for it.

Now if I could just get this job thing worked out…

This is a reprint of an article from my Ask a Geek column in the Mount Vernon Register-News. It is written for a general audience, and I hope you like it.

You’re sitting in front of your computer after booting into the operating system and cleaning out your extra startup junk. Now what do you do?

If you are like most people, you either start a web browser or email program. Even if you open a web browser first, most everyone I know goes to check their web-based email. I think that we still get excited at communication with others, even if it’s just letters on a screen. Just like people get excited when they get a package in the mail, we get excited at email from friends and family.

So what do you use for email? There are a great many programs that would like to be your email handler: Outlook Express or Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, Opera Mail, and others. Each of these have their positives and negatives. Some are expandable, heavy, light, built-in to browsers (Opera) and everything in between.

Everyone has their own preference about how they like to access their email, and deciding on a client may require you to try out a few different applications before you figure out what is right for you. I’ll give you my opinions and some overviews here, but try them out and see what you like to use.

Outlook Express (Mail in Vista) is the free client that Microsoft includes in Windows. It is effective at downloading your email and keeping together for you. OE is not a grand program by any means, but it will download email from Hotmail (now Live), which is a big plus if you use that service. Otherwise, it is an extremely simple program that does not do much for you.

Outlook is Microsoft’s professional email program, and rightfully so. I am not a fan of giving Microsoft money, but their Outlook software is excellent. Outlook can keep track of your email, mark it for follow-up, keep track of tasks, and archive your email in files so that you can store them however you need. All of this it does out of the box, and many companies make plugins for Outlook so that you can do even more. Put simply, if you have the money, this is an email program that you should check out.

If you don’t have the money to invest in Outlook, I strongly recommend Mozilla Thunderbird (http://mozilla.com) as an alternative. Thunderbird is a free and open-source email program with many add ons that help it be more productive. Out of the box, Thunderbird is a lot like Outlook Express, but it is expandable by the many add ons available. The great thing about this is that you can add in only what you want or need instead of taking it all in a giant lump like with Outlook. Realize that if you take Thunderbird for a spin, it is not quite as polished as Outlook, but Thunderbird 3 is due soon and promises to be much improved.

There are some quick takes on a few email clients. Each of them has their own unique way of handling email, and one may be more suited to your tastes. I would suggest trying them out and finding what is best for you. Let me know what you prefer.

This is a reprint from my Ask a Geek column that appears weekly in the Register-News. It is written for a general audience, and I hope you enjoy it.

Once your computer has booted into the operating system, most people think it is just sitting there waiting for you to tell it to do something. This is not quite the case.

Many programs are already active and doing things you may not even know about. For example, your antivirus and firewall (you do have both, don’t you?) start automatically with the operating system. That is great and they are protecting you just as they should, however there are other programs that you might not even be aware of that do the same thing and slow down your system.

Adobe, RealPlayer, iTunes, Google products, etc. all install onto your system and are free to download. Unfortunately most or all of these programs also make a setting in your operating system that automatically starts them without your input. They do this under the logic of ‘checking for updates’ or ‘quick-starting’ so that you don’t have to worry about these tasks. Unfortunately every one of these tasks will eat up memory (RAM) and processing power that your computer should be using to do whatever YOU want it to do.

The easy way to see this problem is to look in the lower-right corner of your screen by the clock. Almost every one of those little icons is eating up power that will make your PC run slower than it did before. The sneakier of these programs will not even have an icon in the corner, but will run ‘in the background’ without any easy way to see what it is doing.

Personally, I dig into the Windows’ registry and delete these items so that they don’t start automatically, but there is an easier solution for anyone to use: CCleaner (http://ccleaner.com). CCleaner has been mentioned here before to clean out temp files and help clean out your PC, but it will also clean out these ‘autostart’ or ‘startup’ entries so that you can have back the power that your computer has been robbed of without your knowing.

When using CCleaner, you do so at your own risk. It is generally safe to use so long as you read what you are doing, and it even offers to make a backup before performing tasks so that you can restore if you break anything. Still, you can break things if you are careless.

When cleaning out startup programs, everyone will have different choices to make about which programs to remove or keep. For example, you should keep the startup entries for your antivirus and firewall, but probably not Adobe or Apple Update. Some entries will not really say what they do or what program they are associated with in any way. It is advised that you DO NOT DELETE those entries. It is safer to leave something there than to delete it and then have to go back and fix it later.

When you go to download CCleaner, they ask for a donation. No donation is required, but they ask so that the development can continue. If you can, drop them a buck or two if the program helps you. Thanks to Ms. McClintock for reminding me about this fact via email.

This is a reprint that originally appeared in my ‘Ask a Geek’ column for the Register-News. This is written for a general audience, and I hope you enjoy it.

Your computer is stupid. Yes, for all the wonderful tricks you can accomplish with it, your computer only understands two things ’1′ and ’0′. On and off. Yes or no. Computers at their simplest are binary switches that do a certain thing in response to 1, and another in response to 0. That’s it. There’s your explanation of how a computer works. Everything that you accomplish with a computer is based upon those ones and zeros.

The first part of your computer to use those ones and zeros is the Power On Self Test (POST). When you power on your PC the first thing you usually get is a tiny beep before anything happens most people understand. That beep is your POST completing successfully. It signals that ‘all systems (or pieces) are go’ and the computer can start loading information from the next part.

The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is the second phase of your computing experience and may be completely hidden from you. As noted above, your computer is stupid. The BIOS contains simple commands that tell your hard drive, monitor, and everything else connected to the computer how to ‘talk’. You could almost call it a ‘translator’ for making everything communicate.

Once the basics are out of the way, your BIOS points to a ‘bootloader’ that then points to your operating system – Windows, Apples’ OSX, Linux, or even BSD. At this point, most of you will see your operating system’s loading screen showing the Windows or other logo.

From there you will be taken to your graphical user interface (GUI) where most everyone is used to interacting with their PC. This is where you open your email, surf the web, write on the Register-News forum, or perform any other task you need to get done.

When you add a printer to your PC, you must usually install drivers. Drivers are instructions to tell the operating system how to talk to the BIOS so that the printer or other device will do what you ask. So, the path of communication goes – Program > Operating system > Driver > BIOS > Device. I warned you that the computer is stupid, and that long trip to print a report or picture proves it. Four steps to accomplish one task. Still, I think we all can agree that computers make our lives much simpler and easier.

There you have a simple explanation of how your computer talks to itself. There is a lot more ‘behind the scenes’ action, but hopefully this will get you a working understanding of how your computer operates on the inside.

Lately my blog has been getting hit hard by spam. I have some awesome plugins that don’t let any of it through, but I still see it from the administrative side. I suppose that a lot is relative though. There are only 5-10 per day, but my unique visitors are only about 60/day plus 50 or so via RSS.

That equate to about 10% of my traffic spamming me. If the rate is that high for my piddly personal site, I would hate to see how horrible the spam ratio is on a top site like Slashdot, Geek Brief, or anyone else with high traffic. Their moderators must have a full time job doing nothing but cleaning up the crap that gets through.

Are people actually careless enough to let any of this junk through on their sites? Worse yet, are people stupid enough to click on the links from any of the spam that does get through?

Personally, I hope not . Unfortunately I suppose if you have enough links out there, then someone will eventually click on something. The law of averages says that someone, somewhere, will click it. Even if it is just an accident.

In the mean time, be careful where you click and be safe out there.

Recently I have been completing quite a few online applications in my current search. Wal-Mart, Staples, Radio Shack, etc. Each one has their own different application format and style. Some have the common psychological test, some give you scenario questions, and others just want basic information.

My question is, can we use a standard application process, at least to get basic information, education, and work history? I know there will be specific questions and details for each site, but there stands to be some common ground between at least these three key areas.

OpenID has attempted to simplify the login process across websites with its initiative, and I would think that the process could similarly apply to the application process. Simple setup, one time, to be used across many websites. Those of us searching for new employment would be grateful, and companies would gain an extremely simplified application process based on some standards (I would think).

I understand the concerns about privacy and security. I’m a bit paranoid myself, but there are smarter people than me who could address these issues and probably prepare a solution.

I don’t know, but does anyone think it’s a good idea?

Well, I just went through my interview at RLC. It was a panel-style interview, which I’m starting to get used to anymore. Seems like most places are moving to that type of process.

I had a good time chatting with everyone and answering the questions. The range of questions was pretty broad. There were even some that broke new ground in the form of questions I’m used to hearing. Nothing wild, but some new ones to be sure.

Unfortunately I don’t think that I did as well as some other interviews I’ve had recently. My answers don’t sound that great now that I go back and re-think them in my head. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t recall any major gaffes, save one: I said money was important to me.

Yeah, I did.

At the time I said it, it made sense – my current company is shaky thanks to the state and may not be able to pay me. Naturally I am worried about money, and it is important. Still, what kind of idiot says that in an interview?

Apparently I do. Ever wanna bang your head on a desk? I’m there right now. Oh well, perhaps they can see past that faux pas and realize I’m qualified and want to work. I want to work locally. I want to live and be happy.

Wish me luck, they had a lot of applicants and I’m just a one in whatever shot.