Work, work, work

Tomorrow is a new day of installing Win XP and joining a domain on multiple computers. Yee haw. I guess one good thing about it is that I am getting off my ass and walking to each room. So, I actually started that excercise program I promised I would start on New Year’s.

Heard on the radio that the FCC is going to start cracking the whip on cable TV like it has on radio stations. Yes, kiddies, that even means the premium paid channels will have to clean up some. Great. Six Feet Under (HBO) is a kick ass show and now I’m sure the FCC is going to ruin it.

On a brighter note, Techno generic forums are back up. Bayp did a kick ass job using phpBB2. Join up and post your heart out. The mods are great and not harsh. You’re pretty much free to post what you want as long as you don’t pull a bunch of BS.

Tip: OpenOffice.org is an awesome, and free, office suite. It can open & save Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It also has a drawing program, but I’ve never used it so I can’t comment. The native format for the OOo (OpenOffice.org) files is much smaller in size than when saved as the MS equivalant, but it is nice to save it in a format for others that are using MS Office.To get the most out of it, download the latest version of Java. Be warned that when using it with Java, it is slow, so you may get better performance by telling it during the install not to use Java.

Another great feature is the PDF and Flash plug-ins (built-in, not a seperate download). Documents and spread sheets can be saved as PDF files without having to have a distiller or buying Adobe Acrobat. The PowerPoint presentations can be saved as Flash files for easy viewing in a web browser.

Be forewarned that it is a big download so dial-up users may want to just order a CD or start the download over night.

27.Jun.04 General, Tech Tip