Connected a networked timeclock this week…

January 22nd, 2010

I know one business that has used a timeclock connected to a computer to help with payroll for several years. Like other things, the serial port is the most basic connection to a PC so their timeclock connected this way.

As technology has advanced, the newer timeclocks now offer a network connection, just as your PC, perhaps your printer, and more and more devices do.

We seem to have run into a legacy (serial port) bug however. The timeclock software was originally written to use the serial port. It seems to want to talk with the clock device and when it can’t do it, it’s crashing Windows XP.

Serial ports have been around since before the first PC. I suspect they existed in the 1960′s when printers were first connected to computers (perhaps the 1950′s?). They are prone to error as much older technology was and are no longer the best choice available.

We’ll dig into this further but my guess is that there is a setting in the timeclock software that causing it to poll the clock periodically. Once we turn this off, Windows won’t crash anymore.

Never a dull moment :-)

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Google AdWords 1

November 28th, 2009

I’ve been learning quite a bit about Google advertising and other services lately.

First, AdWords – Set up an AdWords account for each web site you want to advertise. You can have these individual accounts (with their own AdWords and Analytics reports if you set them up) tied to a master “My Client Center” account. This is the way marketing pros do this.

Now, within AdWords, set up Campaigns based on geographic areas. Within the Campaign, set up Ad Groups based on product types — products whose ads share the same keywords.

Yahoo and Microsoft click-advertising models are similar.

This will provide good controls, the ability to work on multiple sites from a single sign-on (the Google ID you use for your My Client Center account), and reports with good accuracy for the geographic area of your campaign.

On advice from a friend, I set up separate campaigns for Search and Content networks. I end up entering my ads twice but the stats and conversion success will be that much more specific.

Internet marketing is cool — but your effectiveness is very much a product of the effort you put in.

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Blog Spam – Who would have thought?

July 9th, 2009

So it turns out that people can discover your blog much like they can discover your e-mail address. Then spamming programs send comments to the blog.

This part of the site has been up a few weeks. I’d say I get about 3 spam comments a week. Since all comments need to be approved before they appear on the site, none have ever been “public”.

This is just one more bit of internet baggage.

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Google AdSense – a minute later

June 22nd, 2009

By the time I posted my note about the new [AdSense] space on my blog, saved it, and went to view the blog to see how the post looks — well, Google had it’s ads served up and looking nice in the right column.

It took a little reading and a little poking around but I’d guess I’ve invested less than an hour between Google and WordPress (the program that runs this blog) to get to this point.

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Google AdSense – 1st Encounter

June 22nd, 2009

I’m not really looking to sell things on my web site or in this blog but I do want to know how internet advertising works. To that end, the modesttech.com web site contains links to products I recommend and use and I have joined a referral network that manages some of the ads. I can earn a commission if you go to another site by clicking on the ad on my site.

Yesterday I signed up with Google for an AdSense account. “AdSense” is the name of their content network. This is a collection of web sites (other that Google’s sites) that agree to show ads  that Google provides (ads for Google’s advertisers). I’ve added space in the right column of the blog for Google advertising.

It appears to be working – sort of. At the moment, the “Google” space in the blog is showing a [Page not found] error. I know I’ve seen this on other web sites. I suspect Google’s system is trying to determine what ad to show and until then, isn’t displaying anything. We’ll see.

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I have MS-Office 2002 and need to open MS-Office 2007 files

June 21st, 2009

Microsoft has continued development of the Office suite. The newer version “2007″ uses a different file format and a different naming convention (ex: .docx for Word 2007 and .xlsx for Excel 2007). Thankfully they have released a free download that enables you to open these files with Office 2002 programs. A friend sent a .docx file to me today. I did a quick search and discovered this. I installed it, and my Word XP/2002 opened up the .docx document without trouble (although it took a few seconds extra to translate it into something it could use).

[Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats]

Here’s the link (if it’s outdated, a quick search should find it):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

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Sending a fax to a list of recipients.

June 19th, 2009

Fax machines have been around a few decades. They are still quite useful in business. Other business communication methods are catching on (e-mail, text messaging, etc) but tends to be treated differently than printed mail and faxes received.

We have business relationships that are maintained with the fax machine. Purchase Orders are exchanged routinely between businesses. This makes the fax a machine a good way to convey other messages with confidence that they will be received and more than a moment will be devoted to them.

What I’m getting to is using the fax technology to send messages to dozens or hundreds of contacts in an automated manner. Fax machines themselves can send to a batch of recipients (if you’ve set up your contact lists for this). If you need to send 500 or more, I would recommend using a service that can send large batches for you very efficiently.

What I do is rather basic. I use a computer with a fax modem… a text file of contacts is imported to Outlook Express… and I “print” my message to the “fax” device on my computer (this capability exists within Windows, no special software is required). There are technical aspects to setting this up but I have a routine set up to build my list… “print to fax”… and let the computer work through the contact list I imported to Outlook… attempting to send a fax to each phone number… through the night.

It’s simple, cheap, and once set up, a fairly easy way to get the job done.

Note: Don’t forget about the rules that govern the use of fax machines. Basically, you should only send faxes to those who have offered their fax phone number to you (or to the public in general) directly. Visit the FCC web site for specific verbage.

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Limited or no connectivity – networking error

June 15th, 2009

Working on a Dell laptop with XP home. The “wired” network connection works great. The “wireless” connection gives a message (bubble over icon in system tray) reporting “Limited or No Connectivity”. The IP address cannot be reset. When attempting an IP address reset, “DHCP Server Not Found”.

I know I’ve hit this before. The problem had something to do with Winsock. There are programs out there  as well as instructions to repair Winsock, including how to uninstall and reinstall the TCP/IP protocol.

Apparently the “Limited or No Connectivity” issue can be caused by several different things. Today, the solution was to manually start the “Wireless Zero Configuration” service. After trying other things without success, this was the fix.

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services

Find [Wireless Zero Configuration] in the list of services. In my case, it was set to automatically start, but it wasn’t started. I right-clicked on it, chose [Start] and watched as my wireless connection picked up a new IP address and found the internet.

Note: When Windows cannot find IP settings from the network it goes with a sort of failsafe setting – “Automatic Private IP Address (APIPA)” of 169.254.196.232 (or a similar IP). Most home networks and many business networks use IP addresses starting with 192.168.x.x so the 169.254.x.x IP is well outside the range your router will support so if Windows sets itself to the “Automatic…” address, you’re PC likely won’t communicate with anything (other computers, printers, etc) on your network or with the internet.

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Linux – Hard drive partitions

May 28th, 2009

I’m working with my first Linux computer. There are many implementations of Linux. As I understand it, each has the same core software; open-source, free, “Linux”. The implemenation I’m using is CentOS. I’m not seeing it in it’s true form as it came with the “Asterisk Now” ISO file I downloaded (Asterisk is a network phone system – more on this in other posts).

When you first install (from a bootable CD created with the ISO file), you are asked if you’d like to delete all partitions and start new (or use an existing Linux partition or create a new partition in available disk space).

I choose to delete existing partitions (the drive had formerly been used for Windows 2000). This worked, the drive was formatted and Linux (CentOS 5.3) was installed.

After playing around I thought I’d start fresh again so booted on my CD… choose “delete existing partitions”… and the installation locked up. I tried this several times and the lock up occurred at different places. I fiddled with hardware (could there be a driver problem? RAM that went bad?).

In the end, I pulled the drive out (that had Linux installed on it once), connected it via USB cable to another computer (running WinXP), opened Computer Management — and discovered that Linux creates a small (128mb) partition as well as one big partition using the rest of the drive. Using Computer Management in XP, I removed both partitions from the drive then disconnected it and put it back in the Linux PC. I ran the install with “delete existing partitions” and — no lockups! CentOS installed without complaint.

Along the way I also tried to installed Windows XP on this drive (after it had Linux on it). XP’s installation also locked up. After removing the Linux partitions (as noted above), XP installed without incident.

I didn’t try it but suspect that the “install on existing Linux partition” option would have worked for a fresh install of Linux.

Bottom line: Linux creates 2 partitions on the drive. If you want to use the drive in the future for Windows, you’ll need to remove these partitions first. If you want to install Linux anew, you also need to be aware of this behavior.

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New Blog, First Post

May 28th, 2009

I turned on the Blog feature today. There are a few software choices to make from my hosting service (Host Gator). I choose WordPress (for no specific reason). Since this is new to me (blogging that is), I don’t know what I can do yet.

The key thing I know I will be able to do — is to post notes about things as I learn. If something might be useful to someone else, this could be a simple way to make it available.

Comments are welcome!

 … Rich

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