This is definitely what I want to be doing in the future. Obviously, there are days where everything breaks, but that’s with any job. Currently, I’ve been doing a lot of projects involving security changes, as well as revamping some of our processes to make use of what we have more efficiently.

On my most recent project, which I started a couple of days ago, I’ve been using Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for hardware and software inventory. This product’s been around for quite a while – formerly being called SMS. We use it for distributing software, and generating reports on who has what, among other things. I’m trying to customize SCCM to hold our inventory information with a variety of things. It seems like an easy enough concept, but I’ve learnt that applying it is more complicated than trying to design a method.

I urge you to check out a more technical blog that my friends started, which I’ll be contributing to. This is more meant to be a place where we keep our notes for ourselves, either through our experiences or referencing other stuff we’ve found online; but hopefully this helps you. http://nerdy-notes.blogspot.com.

On a more personal note, classes are going to be starting up in another couple of weeks. I’m not sure what this fourth/final year is going to hold for me, but I’m definitely looking forward to my CCIE classes/labs and my Capstone Project. Computer Forensics sounds interesting as well!

For everyone starting classes, whether you’re in Elementary school, High school, Apprenticeship, or College/University; I’d like to wish you the best of luck for the upcoming year.

Ciao!

Those of you that know me know that I primarily use Google Chrome as my primary web browser, and have been using it for quite a while now. To me, Chrome’s convenience and speed outweigh the resource usage.

I find that Chrome makes me more productive than most other browsers do, as a huge part of my day is spent on the laptop, and usually browsing the web for research, etc.

A lot of people prefer Firefox for the use of it’s plugins (Firefox has a TON of plugins), but Chrome’s extension gallery is growing day by day, and a lot of useful plugins have been ported from Firefox to Chrome.

Here’s some Chrome’s plugins that make my day a little more productive:

• AdThwart - Uses the AdBlock+ engine from Firefox to block annoying popups, and ads. (AdBlock works just as well on Chrome, but not AdBlock+)
• AutoPager Chrome – Automatically loads the next page on a website with multiple pages (i.e. Google) just by scrolling to near the bottom of the page
• Chromed Bird – Twitter client
• Feedly – I was looking for a good RSS reader forever, and I was finally satisfied when I came across this. It uses Google Reader’s API to pull your RSS feeds from Google, and displays it in a really nice, organized, presentable view
• Firebug Lite – A port of Firebug, from Firefox. Not as clean as the original Firebug, but still useful. I use it for checking over my code when I design websites, etc. Usually I leave it disabled until I need it.
• IE Tab – Allows you to run Internet Explorer’s engine within Chrome to be compatible with websites who require Internet Explorer (like sites that use ActiveX). I keep this one disabled as well until I need it
• One Number – checks Google Reader, Gmail, Google Voice, and Google Wave for your inbox updates
• Xmarks Bookmarks Sync – Yes. I’m aware that Chrome is able to sync bookmarks natively, but I like Xmarks for the reason that I can have those same bookmarks on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc. Chrome’s built-in bookmarks synchronization is really good, but as far as I know, it’s limited only to sync bookmarks within Chrome.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions is a good place to find extensions for Google Chrome.

Apple's Magic Mouse

If you haven’t tried Apple’s Magic Mouse yet, you should. It’s not radically different from an old-school mouse, but it’s really cool. The multi-touch features are pretty cool too..but like I said, it’s still a mouse. For more information on the mouse, go to Apple’s Magic Mouse page. It’s a pretty decent mouse; especially considering its Bluetooth, and multi-touch and only costs $69.00 from the Apple Store.

Here’s the catch. It only works on Mac’s. There’s no drivers for the Magic Mouse on Windows. Until now…(well..it’s still not 100% legit, but hey, if it’s good, then who cares, right?)

But Dan at UNEASYsilence has posted both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the latest Windows drivers for the Magic Mouse, which Apple delivered via an update for Apple’s Bootcamp. You can find his blog post which has the drivers at http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2009/11/14588/.

Lets start with the basics: How to insert an equation in the document

This is super simple. There’s two ways of doing this:

1. In the “ribbon” go to Insert -> Equation (it has a huge pi symbol above it, you can’t miss it)
2. Use the keyboard shortcut Alt + = (that’s Alt and Equal)

Equation Editor 2007

I’m not going to explain all the things you can do in Equation Editor, but basically you can see the symbols, and the different functions you can put in to the right of the symbols. The interface is really simple to use; I’m sure you can figure it out.

Userful Keyboard Shortcuts

Here’s some useful keyboard shortcuts that Brad/Albert/Myself find useful while in Equation Editor:

Subscripts: _ (underscore) Eg: A_c for A subscript c
Superscript: ^ (carat/hat/whatever you want to call it) Eg: x^2 for x²

Division: / Eg:  1/2 for ½ Note: I can’t really give a good example without including an image but it gives 1 right above 2
Multiplication: \times  gives you the multiplication symbol (×) or \bullet gives you a dot in the middle if you don’t want to use ×

Integral: \int brings up the integral symbol, combine with subscript and superscript to get definite integrals. Eg: \int_-10^10 for a definite integral from -10 to 10.

Greek letters: basically these are just \ then their name. Capitalize the first letter if you want a capital letter. Eg: \pi gives you π but a \Pi would give you an uppercase pi.

Arrows:  ->  <- ….you get the idea..

These are just a few of the commands..there’s a much more in-depth list available in pdf format at: http://bit.ly/9ajhbS. It’s really well done..and explained probably better than I do.

Hope that helps! If you have any questions, leave a comment!

1) Use Xmarks to synch with your IE/FF/Opera/whatever else
Sign up here

2) Upgrade your Google Chrome Browser to 4.0.201.1 by following the steps here. Now, all you need to do is run your Chrome browser with the “–enable-sync” flag, and go to “Wrench”->”Sync my bookmarks…”

Now, all I ask for is Adblock plus…

Also, yesterday, the Chrome crew released a beta out for next Chrome. Apparently they improved the javascript execution speeds, as well as add the ability to move around the thumbnails in the “new tab” page, and pin them in a certain spot. They added a few features to the Omnibox too: (from Google)

• A star icon  appears next to bookmarked sites.
• A clock icon  appears next to sites from your browsing history.
• A magnifying glass icon  appears next to searches, including suggested searches if you have suggestions turned on.
• A globe icon  appears next to suggested sites, when you have suggestions turned on.

HTML5 support has been added too, which should be cool, because people are slowly starting to switch to HTML5, which has some cool stuff like tagging, etc.

Lastly, they added the ability to change the look of Chrome, or change “the chrome of Google Chrome”, as Google put it, which doesn’t really add any functionality, but hey, if you don’t like the look of the current Chrome, you’re in luck.

You can read more about the new version of Chrome on the Google Chrome blog: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-beta-why-slow-down-when-you-can.html

Now that I’m done, I can install the beta =)

OS of choice: VMware ESXi 4.0

Now, I haven’t used any of their competitors products (Citrix XenServer, or Microsoft Hyper-V), but I must say that ESXi is quite easy to install, and to use.

Why virtualize?

Well, in my case, I only needed to have 1 box for an entire lab, including (soft) routers, a few servers, and a couple of clients to test out stuff.

This saved me so much money…especially in terms of power and equipment: instead of having several boxes, I have one box, with one power supply, that’s utilized very efficiently.

For those of you that are students like myself, and want to toy around with different operating systems interacting with each other, but don’t want to have the overhead of running several physical machines in your house, I highly suggest this.

If you’re not too sure on how to get VMware ESXi set up, just google it, there are a lot of tutorials for installing ESXi.

Just be careful about you’re hardware; make sure everything’s compatible with ESXi or whatever virtualizing platform you may choose to use.

Good luck!

Screenshot

For those of you that haven’t heard, Stardock (the same people who made DesktopX, ObjectDock, WindoBlinds, etc…) has a program called Fences. Basically, this program lets you create zones where you can put stuff on your desktop, and basically creates “fences” so that you can categorize your icons. Also, double-clicking hides all the icons/”fences” by default; but, if theres icons you want to have on your desktop no matter what (like My Computer for example) you can simply right-click and say “Exclude this fence from quick-hide” which keeps it on the desktop.

I’ve been trying it out for a couple of weeks now, and I like it a lot. For those of you who use Kubuntu or KDE, it’s similar to the area’s on the desktop in KDE 4.1. 

A nifty feature that Stardock could include for their next update is to show  folders in there (ie. if you have a folder elsewhere on your computer, the Fence can display the contents in the folder.

Try it out! http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

They say it works on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (including with the 32 and 64 bit editions for both Vista and 7)