Category: Technology

Back to School at Rend Lake

August 28th, 2007 · · Illinois, School, Technology 2 comments - Tags:

Well, the first week was a rush of madness. Getting the kids around, dropping them off, getting my supplies and to class on time. We did make it through somehow, and this week things are settling in to a nice routine.

My OS class seems to be simple enough. Mostly learning about the ins and outs of Windoze. I’m sure I’ll learn something in there. Intro to computers is pretty simplistic, but it is required for the degree. An easy A if nothing else, I think. Communication 101 (speech) is just another one of the required courses. Being a little older, it isn’t that big of a deal this time around.

Networking Fundamentals. Wow. I don’t know what to say about that class other than it is my hardest one I believe. In our first chapter we had a crash course in Base10/2/0x conversions. That was interesting. I believe it could definitely scare off someone who was iffy about the class. The conversions aren’t really hard, and once you get them you want to slap your head and say “Duh.”

Fortunately, I did understand the formulas and was even able to help a girl understand who just didn’t quite catch on immediately. For my first test I scored perfect. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m just relieved and encouraged. Yes, I was a dork and threw my arms up in triumph when the page popped up and told me my score. Yep, that excited.

I hope things keep going so well. Wish me luck! (please)

🙂

Walgreens Distribution Center to expand/upgrade in Mount Vernon

August 14th, 2007 · · Illinois, Mount Vernon, Technology 7 comments - Tags: ,

Details are a bit fuzzy at this point, however an anonymous source close to the local distribution center has confirmed that Walgreens will be expanding at their Mount Vernon location. A building permit was applied for by the company and there has been much buzz about this fact.

At this point, all that is known is that there will be new space built or added on that will include the addition of automated equipment to assist with the shipping of e-commerce and makeup supplies. The Mount Vernon DC is the only center in the country that ships makeup for Walgreens.

The new automated equipment will help actually bring items to employees to be “picked” and shipped to stores. While there will be new automated equipment in this addition, of course employees will be needed to run this part as well. New hiring has not been confirmed, but one could assume this will be the case.

We hope to have more details this afternoon, and we ask forgiveness if this is old news to anyone or everyone.

Update: Very little in the way of details, but here it is – The new construction and/or renovation in the Black Building is expected to cost ~$80 million. E-commerce and central pick will be transferred in 4 phases. Phase 1 will involve 100% of the e-commerce being moved and 20% of the central pick. The other 3 phases will finish the movement of central pick to this new area.

The higher level of automation will be accomplished by using technology from Kiva Systems. To be honest, the robots remind us of “Roombas”, only designed to move products instead of vacuuming a floor. Here is a video of the ‘bots in action at a Staples DC via FastCompany.com.

Okay, R-N, who are you?

August 14th, 2007 · · Mount Vernon, Technology 5 comments - Tags: , ,

Wow, somebody at the Register-News likes me, or at least is curious about me. Someone on a Mac, using IE 5, has done a search for me on Google, and they were using the R-N’s internet connection [link removed].

To you, R-N person, I say “Hi!”

If you really want to know something about me, just ask. With this blog I have become more public with my life, and would love to hold a conversation. Email is fine, or just use the comments here.

Since it’s been awhile since I’ve updated my stats, I’ll list some of them here because I have nothing else to fill up space.

🙂

Last month we had over 4800 page views with 1350 unique visitors. We are stalled at about 30 RSS subscribers. Windows XP is still the favorite OS among visitors, followed by Linux and Mac respectively.

For browsers, IE6 leads the pack. It is followed by Firefox and IE7. I would theorize comparing the number of XP users v IE7 users that a great number of users are not updating Windows as they should.

Please keep your system up to date with updates, antivirus, and a good firewall. It makes the Web safer for us all!

Unemployed – It’s not so liberating

July 16th, 2007 · · Mount Vernon, Technology 4 comments - Tags:

Okay, the first week or two of being unemployed were kind of nice. Accomplished a few menial tasks around the house, put in the outside faucet, and generally played housewife.

Now I’m 1.5 months into this experience, and I’m tired of it. I want employment. Better yet, I want to employ myself. I’m still scouring Monster.com, HotJobs, classifieds, and everyone I know, but I can’t find anything around here that I fit or that provides anywhere near the income I had.

I’m feeling good about my resume and my abilities though. If/when something pops-up, I will be able to present myself well. My experience and ability to learn new things will help me in my ever-elusive pursuit. Just have to convince interviewers of that fact.

Heck, I taught myself the ins and outs of GSM phone service. I busted my hump and they created a position for me, so I must have done something right. Bernard took me under his wing and kicked me in the right direction while I was feeling my way around Linux and “adminning”.

I’ve taken an advert out in the Sentinel to test the waters for PC service. We’ll see how many more calls I get on that in the next few days. That would be awesome to do for a living, but we’ll see how it goes.

Visits, search engines, readers, and spiders. Oh my!

July 13th, 2007 · · Technology No comments - Tags: , ,

Last night I installed a new plugin that is supposed to track visitors, search engine hits, search engine spiders, and lots of other useless information that’s only of interest to me probably.

Well, I just checked it and it shows some cool information (it’s cool to me anyway).

To begin, somebody else is searching for me. My name anyway. I know, there are other people with the same name, but it’s just weird to see another search for “me”.

Search engines seem to like me, especially Yahoo. They hit my site 81 times over the course of today. Google was right behind, and MSN brought up the rear. The good news for me is that I am the top result on all of the engines. In real-world terms it doesn’t mean much, but personally I enjoy it.

Another stat that I find cool is that I do have ~140 unique visitors. That confirms the information I was getting from the server at my hosting provider. I enjoyed thinking that there were so many people reading the junk I put on here, but I was never fully trusting. Now, I have verification.

Generally, though, my totals for any one month keep maxing out at about 2100 unique visitors. If everyone gave $1/month, I could do this for a living and probably get more and better content. I had never thought about it like that, but the math is there. Think about it, loyal readers.

😉

Unfortunately, 90% of you are using Windows while viewing my site. I don’t hate Windows, but I do think people should check out the alternatives. Heck, even try a Mac if it turns your crank. Just don’t give up the freedom of choice to Microsoft and Billy Gates.

Some of you may have noticed posts titled “Dan’s Twitter Updates for xxxxx”. Those are short little updates done from my phone via text message. Twitter is a nifty website/service where people and their friends can send one text to Twitter and have it go to everyone who subscribes to their updates. It’s convenient because you can know what your friends are doing and they can know what you’re up to lately. It was really designed for interesting people and club-types, but it’s useful.

Finally, I would like to plead with you loyal readers to subscribe to my RSS feed however is convenient for you. For all of you there is the benefit of it automatically pulling down the feed so you don’t have to come to my site, and it helps me show that people are regularly reading my material. Plus, when you use an RSS reader you can subscribe to a whole bunch of feeds and categorize them so you can track every one without having to go to each site to check for new stories or articles.