Do you daydream of leaving behind all your day-to-day turf battles in corporate IT? Think the other side of the fence looks more green?
The recent post in Software By Rob outlines many obvious and not so obvious costs and expenses in starting your own software or consulting business.
After you consider these expenses and overhead, don’t forget you still have to take care of the customers AND scout new business prospects.
Expenses You Don’t Think of When Starting a Business | Software by Rob
Weekend Warrior Business, Career
Browsing the used computers for sale on Craigslist this morning, I ran across an ad for a Mac laptop. The seller posted basic information about the computer’s specs in their ad, but does the seller really know what he/she is selling?
How do I know the asking price is realistic, based on the description the seller is providing?
How can I be sure that the computer advertised is the one that I’ll physically take delivery of?
If I was seriously going to pursue the purchase of this computer, this is the information I’d ask the seller for:
- Ask for a screen shot of the Apple Profiler’s Hardware Overview screen. I’m looking for the serial number underlined in this example screen shot.
- With the serial number in hand, visit this Apple link <http://support.apple.com/specs/> and provide the computer’s serial number information.
- This serial number search doesn’t display any personal information about the current owner or indicate warranty status for the hardware.
Now I have more information from which to make a more informed purchasing decision.
If you’re a seller of an Apple computer in the future, why not include this information when you post your ad?
Don’t forget to compare the Ebay or Craigslist prices to Apple’s Refurbished (full warranty) prices <http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/>
Macintosh Apple, Classified, Craigslist, Ebay, Macintosh, Refurbished, Seler, Used
My trusty Dell C640 laptop with Windows XP doesn’t have a built-in function key sequence for disabling the wireless LAN card.
On a Intel support forum, I ran across this thread and I followed the suggestions for installing the Microsoft DevCon utility and launching an on or off batch file. I’m now using an on and off batch file in conjunction with the free version of the Keybreeze utility
Laptop, Weekend Warrior, Windows
Record and report all Presentation Server configuration changes. Track changes made to the Presentation Server farm, by whom and at what time to simplify and accelerate troubleshooting. Configuration Logging is invaluable for auditing and ensuring accountability when multiple administrators are maintaining Presentation Server.
A very nice how-to article provided at alsolorzano.com
Citrix
The GPDBPA tool is a stand-alone program that an administrator can run
from a Windows Server 2003-based system or from a Windows XP-based
system. You can use the tool to do the following:
| • |
Perform
a proactive health check on the Group Policy environment to detect
common configuration errors that frequently generate support incidents. |
| • |
Collect diagnostic information and initial data from an environment, and then automate some analysis of that data. |
| • |
Obtain
a snapshot of the Group Policy configuration for archiving. This data
may be a useful reference if a future problem occurs. |
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940122
Active Directory, Windows
From the Start button, select -> Settings -> Control Panel
Select the -> Add or Remove Programs applet
Fromthe list of Currently install programs: click once on Citrix Presentation Server For Windows and click the -> Change button.
Make the changes you need.
Citrix
For simple off-line blog editing, from either a Mac or Windows platform, I really like the simplicity and efficiency of the ScribeFire add-on for the FireFox browser. I’ve tried Microsoft’s Live Writer beta on Windows and Ecto on the Macintosh.
Weekend Warrior
A very clean export from Wordpress.com and import to wordpress 2.2.2 blog hosted on A Small Orange.
Weekend Warrior
Meaningless technical tidbit, but if Computer Associates (CA) is good enough for Microsoft’s coders, why not the rest of us? Mark Russinovich in a recent blog posting.
Weekend Warrior, Windows
Songs purchased on the iTunes Store can be copied to an unlimited number of computers. However, only five computers at a time can play your iTunes DRM-protected music*.
You can enable a computer to play your purchased music by authorizing it. You can remove a computer from the authorization list by deauthorizing it. Deauthorizing your computer does not erase your music files; it simply prevents your purchased music from playing until you authorize that computer again.
Apple - Support - iTunes Store - Authorization FAQ
Macintosh, Weekend Warrior
