Updates

Instead of maintaining separate blogs and cross-posting here I will only be posting tech-related posts to:

http://christophertaverna.com/blog/index.php/category/techiegeek/

You can subscribe to the Tech only posts at: http://christophertaverna.com/blog/index.php/category/techiegeek/feed/

Check there for any new posts. I will leave this site up for archives of the old posts since they still get regular hits.

Estonian Names

I am pleased to announce the completion of the Pronunciation and Meaning of Estonian Names website I have been working on with Dr. Edwin Lawson.

Due to various time constraints on my part, as well as a few revisions, this site has taken about a year to complete! Needless to say I am very pleased to have this project completed. Check it out, I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

For all the Vista haters

I have been a strong supporter and denfender of Windows Vista since I first installed it so hearing about the Mohave experiment made me smile.

Basically, what Microsoft did was take a bunch of people who had never used Vista but hated it anyway and offer to let them use the next Windows codenamed Mohave. After loving the Mohave the participants were told that they were in fact using Vista. That is just full of Win!

The Vista blog post about it. (link)

The Mohave fact-sheet. (link)

The Mohave videos. (link)

Happy SysAdmin Day!

Well it’s the last Friday in July. That means it is System Administrator Appreciation Day.

So cheers to all of us who keep their respective systems up and running!

Firefox 3 – Initial Thoughts

So I installed Firefox 3 on two computers today. The first is my main Vista desktop. It had one crash after the first launch, but then ran fine the rest of the day. The second is my XP laptop, which I am writing on now. I have had 5 crashes in the last hour and so far am not a happy camper.

Not to focus on the negative, but here are a list of things I don’t like at first glance:

1. All the crashing. Can I have some stability please?

2. The address bar, or whatever they are calling now the magic bar or something. Why can’t it just bring up a list of previously entered websites like before. Don’t try to outsmart me and guess what I might want. So far it has always been wrong.

3. I miss the yellow address bar when on an https secure site. It was a nice visual clue. I know I can hack it to get it back, but that shouldn’t be necesarry.

I’m sure there will be good things I like about Firefox 3 and I will run it awhile longer to give it a chance. But at first glance it is enough to make me go back to Internet Explorer 7 or try another browser. I haven’t used Opera in forever, maybe it’s time to check it out again. Or Flock, which although it’s based on Firefox, is significantly different. I’ll report back my decision. Maybe I will be converted and love version 3, who knows?

CCAEYC Web Project

I have been doing some work on creating a web presence for the Chautauqua County Association for the Education of Young Children. You can visit the site at: http://ccaeyc.com/

This was the most work I have done with WordPress theme editing. I am really pleased with the way it has turned out. I was debating whether to use WordPress or Drupal or something else to manage the site. I decided on WordPress because I am most familiar with that. Some of the changes to the newer versions of WordPress do make using it as a CMS more possible than before. Check it out!

Why I Do What I Do

A while back someone asked me why I did my job and wasn’t I tired of it yet. My response was no I’m not tired of it, I actually enjoy what I do.
Working at a college is very interesting and it is a nice place to work. From one perspective it can be frustrating since we don’t get paid like our private industry colleagues. However, I can truly say I am making it possible for many students to do their classwork. Sometimes a job is more about altruistic ideals and about making a difference than collecting a big paycheck (not that I would be opposed to a raise ).

One of the things I do is administer several computer labs on campus. I am responsible for 7 computer labs, with a total of 146 computers. In the first half of the current semester those labs have served 2,431 unique users (approximately 44% of the total student population). There have been 23,190 total logins and a combined usage of 27,838 hours and 40 minutes. The fact that this was possible because I did my job well is a big deal to me. I am proud of the work I do and feel like I am making a difference.

Library of Congress Veterans History Project Interview

I recently finished the web page for Dr. Lawson’s Interview for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project (link).

Since there is one video and it is the main content of the site I embedded the file player directly into the page, however it can also be downloaded. I always enjoy doing these web projects and continually learn new things from them.

Outlook 2007 Gadgets

As I’ve stated before I am a huge fan of the Vista Operating System and Outlook 2007. One thing I like in Vista is the Sidebar and one thing I like in Outlook 2007 is the To-Do Bar. Now there is a best of both worlds and you can put parts of your To-Do Bar on the Sidebar!

The Outlook Appointments Gadget lets you put 3-5 of your upcoming appointments right on the sidebar, so even if Outlook is hidden you can see your upcoming appointments. Similarly the Outlook Tasks Gadget lets you put the task list from the To-Do Bar into your sidebar. It it slightly confusing since it is more than just your Tasks; it also displays emails you’ve flagged for follow up as well, just like on the To-Do Bar. To save space I have mine configured to show 3 appointments and only items I’ve marked as due Today.

I have wanted a way to float the To-Do Bar since it goes away unless you are on the Outlook Today page, but this is the next best thing. Better actually since it can just live on my sidebar instead of taking up more desktop space.

Links: Outlook Upcoming Appointments Gadget and Outlook Tasks Gadget via Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog

too many versions

I am a huge fan of the Microsoft Vista OS. However I think that they made a mistake in releasing too many versions of Vista. I think they should have kept it at three, like they did with XP. That wasn’t too confusing. Now people want to sue Microsoft because they were confused by what “Vista Capable” meant (link to article).

As a general rule you should never run a computer at the published minimum specs anyway. But the fact that “capable” machines weren’t able to run anything but the basic version of Vista was never a good thing. People would just see the sticker and expect to get a super computer for a few hundred bucks. I think the lawsuit is frivolous and without merit, but since everyone loves to hate Microsoft it might actually proceed. I hope it doesn’t.

However, I’m sure the general confusion among the populous is why Vista gets so many bad reviews and why people seem to be afraid of it or hate it. If Microsoft mandated that computer hardware had to be realistic for good performance then I think people would have less to complain about. That is one area where Apple shines. They don’t let their OS get put on some crap hardware that is under-powered and unstable so they look better. I wonder if a lot of the bad press does come from people running lower end computers?