Monday, December 8, 2008

Bulk Add Users and Groups

It is very easy to add users and groups, especially using a batch file. Open up your favourite text editor, I prefer Notepad. Just start on the first line in the document begin your commands.

Example
:

net user CharlesFrozen Password01 /ADD
net localgroup "Students" /add
net localgroup "Students" CharlesFrozen /ADD


On the first line you are telling the computer that you are adding a user by the name of CharlesFrozen with the password of Password01 and you are telling the computer to add him to the user group with the /Add command.

On the second line you are telling the computer to add a group by the name of "Students" then the /ADD command.

On the third line you are telling the computer to add to the "Students" group CharlesFrozen then the /ADD command.

Now to show you how to do more users and groups:

net user CharlesFrozen Password01 /ADD
net user JessicaMiller Password01 /ADD
net user JillRobber Password01 /ADD
net user KimSheep Password01 /ADD
net user ElvisAbbot Password01 /ADD
net user MikeMeathead Password01 /ADD
net user IkeOverload Password01 /ADD
net user ClintWallpaper Password01 /ADD

net localgroup "Students" /add
net localgroup "Students" CharlesFrozen /ADD
net localgroup "Students" ClintWallpaper /ADD
net localgroup "Students" IkeOverload /ADD
net localgroup "Students" MikeMeathead /ADD
net localgroup "Students" ElvisAbbot /ADD
net localgroup "Students" KimSheep /ADD
net localgroup "Students" JillRobber /ADD

net user KeithMcRay Password02 /ADD
net user KenLasery Password02 /ADD
net user LindaHiker Password02 /ADD
net user KitFinal Password02 /ADD
net localgroup "Faculty" /add
net localgroup "Faculty" KeithMcRay /ADD
net localgroup "Faculty" LindaHiker /ADD
net localgroup "Faculty" KitFinal /ADD
net localgroup "Faculty" KenLasery /ADD


The last and final step is when saving the document is to write .bat at the end of the file name that you are saving it as, BatchAddStudentAndFaculty.bat.

To deploy just right click the file and select run. You may need to select run as administrator depending on the operating system.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Retrieve Wireless Internet Key

Have you ever been in the situation where you needed the key back to your wireless internet key? You can remember the one of thousands of passwords you may have used for it? Well WirelessKey View has your back. It will be able to retrieve the password of all of the wireless networks you have connected to. There is no install, just run the .exe file and you are all set.

Click here to download WirelessKey (Download not work? Click here for the homepage)

Click here
to read about it on Lifehacker.com

How to Start your Spooler

Went to go print a document and it wouldn't print. Went to see what the problem was and my printer spooler had stopped. What is a print spooler? It is a program that puts print jobs in order so that it can print documents one at a time, so if this stops then nothing will print.

The Solution:

1. Open a command prompt
2. Type net start spooler
3. Let the magic happen

That's it! You have now successfully started your print spooler. You should now be able to print your documents.

Cant edit a document scenario

The scenario:

John Smith has finally reached his goal of getting his dream job as a copy writer in the Marketing department. He has been an accounting clerk for the past five years
On his new PC, he has been told to login, and then navigate to the M (Marketing) drive and modify his biography. When he goes to edit the biography he finds that he is not able to edit it.

The solution:

The biography was in read only mode which means that the document can be read but not edited. To fix the problem access the biography document as an administrator and right click on the document and select properties. In the General Tab of the properties window uncheckread-only. Next click on the Securities Tab and add John Smith's user account to the Group or User Names with the access to be able to write to the document. John Smith now will be able to edit his biography in the Marketing drive.


How to apply this:

The next time you get a call at the help desk from someone in your office saying they cannot edit a document on the network, or in a shared folder, check to see if they have the correct permissions to edit the document.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Baselining Your Vista


To simply put it, Baselining your machine means that you are defining the normal performance for your machine. Vista, even though it may be a ugly word amongst most people, has given you a tool to help you baseline your machine, which is the Reliability Performance Monitor.

Till now you may not have know that this has existed and it may look a little intimidating, but there is nothing to worry about. Once you check around and play with it you will be glad you did.

To do a simple check of your performance do the following:

1. Go to start
2. In the search box type in " Reliability Performance Monitor", and click on it
3. When it opens click on "Monitoring Tools" on the left side of the window.
4. Click on "Performance Monitor". You should see now that there is a counter already going to check you Processing Time.
5. Click on the "green plus"


(click on window to expand)

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Striped Volume

A striped volume is part of the dynamic disk storage family. It requires the use of two or more dynamic disks and up to 32 dynamic disks. One of the benefits of using striped volumes is that you are able to break up the information of a file and store it on multiple dynamic disks to increase speed of saving a file. One down side is that it is not fault tolerant, and if a disk in the striped volume fails you loose the whole volume.

Click here for more information on striped volumes provided by Google Books.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Linux Flash Drive - How to mount

I am very new to Linux. I am using Fedora Core 2 at one of the work stations here at LDSBC. It wasnt recognizing my flash drive so I "googled" for the answer and these are the steps that I found to make sure you can see the device, directory is created, and the flash drive is mapped.

Steps
1.
Open Terminal on you linux machine
2. To make sure you can see the flash drive type:
less /proc/bus/usb/devices
2a. You will need to use the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard
to scroll through the list of devices. You should then see the description
of the device.

3. When you see the drive open a new terminal window and type the following.
mkdir /mnt/usb1 (type with the space, this makes the directory)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb1 (this maps the drive)

4. You are done! Browse to it by going to computer on the desktop, select file system, select mnt,
then select Usb1 and you will see the files on your usb drive.
If you have any other tips please post them. This probably isnt the easist way to do it, but it works.


Improving Myself :)

Realizing my strengths and weaknesses is hard for me to do, especially realizing my strengths. It is so easy to point out every little thing that I have done wrong, and just skip over all of the accomplishments that I have. What I am going to try to do now is list all the things that I am good at in the realm of System Development Phases, because this is a tech blog :), and see what I can improve on to make goals to better myself.

I love getting to know people. One of the part time jobs that I have is doing promotions for Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler. All I do for them is go to football games and different events and talk about how great it is to own one of their vehicles. With every person that I talk to I try to get a feel for them to see what their personality is so that I can make sure they get the most out of the experience of talking with me about cars. I listen to everything that they say and make sure that I say something like, "well just like you said" or "I get where you are coming from" so that they know I actually care about them as an individual and not just trying to push a vehicle on them. Listen and getting to know someone is key to understanding what they need and then you can plan on what you are able to deliver to them and build a structured plan off of that.

I also feel that I am able to remain flexible with what people want out of something. Usually I am able to adapt pretty to well to what people need. But this can be bad however when I am I am trying to give an accurate price to someone. I like to save people money and sometimes give them a little more then I should so that I can assure that they are happy with a product or service. I need to just give people a price and stick to it.

I can plan out every detail when designing a program or even planning out an event. But I just dont like to have others be my task manager over me. I like to work at my own pace, but when your boss is trying to make you accountable for your work it can make it hard at times. I know why they are asking for status reports along the way, but there are some tasks that will just take longer as planned and I for some reason, dont like to let people down and dont want to tell them I didnt want to reach my goal. I know this isnt the right mentality, so this is another area I think that I can improve on.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Data Mining is an important tool in know what a customer is going to buy. We discussed this by talking about CRM's in a previous post. But this will be a good to talk about again. What type of businesses need to have the most up to date information to best sell their product? Resturaunts like Red Robin, Einstiens, and Pizzeria Uno need the most up to date informaiton. If they can see what it is their cutomers are buying then they are able to adapt and do better product placement in menus and advertising. AFC Enterprises will break the information they receive by a specific region. They know if they offer a certain product in a certain area, like a specialty deseret, then the customer will respond buy getting an extra cup of coffee. They are then able create opportunities that the customer may not have realized before.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

How to over come crappy programing

Who hasn’t had a project deadline be pushed back by a crappy code that has been written? This will happen to every company at one point. It just will. Let’s face it. All hope is not lost though! You can minimize your risks with proper planning, implementation, and testing before fully releasing the program to the public or to internal staff members.
Remember this acronym SDLC, which means Systems Development Life Cycle. The reason why this is important is this helps you see what all needs to happen in order to create a fully functioning program. The steps are simply to:

1. Plan
2. Analyze
3. Design
4. Develop
5. Test
6. Implement
7. Maintain

I want to touch mostly on three of these which are the planning phase, testing, and maintenance. Who hasn’t heard the phrase "Piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance"? This is a phrase that has been told to me many times, and it rings true every time. You must first define a system that needs to be developed. Being precise and straight to the point here is necessary, because if you are too vague on what it is that you are trying to develop you are as if you are an airplane pilot in dense fog without any instruments. Not knowing which way to guide the plane you will end up crashing because you do not know which way is up or down. Setting your sights and sticking with it all the way will make all of the difference in saving you time and money. For in this digital world time is money, and if you are not able to produce your competitors will and you will loose out. Once you know what it is that you are gong to create you need to define the tasks that need to get done, what resources it will take, and set up specific dates that you want to have things accomplished, or in other words setting milestones. After this initial step has taken place you then can move onto the analysis, design, and development portion of the SDLC.
Testing is critical. If you do not test the code that you have written how will you know if it is any good? Not wanting to name names, or to say negative things for a company I know, the development team used to be infamous for writing code and then just implement what they had done without any testing. I being in customer service would then have to take phone calls and get yelled at for several minutes by an angry customer for things our development team did. Many times through all these issues we had at the company, we would loose customers for these errors. Overall meaning loss in revenue, and a bad reputation to potential clients for having a faulty system. If the development team would have simply taken the time to test what they had done then we would not have lost customers, and would have had a better reputation amongst our potential clients for having a well maintained site. My view of testing is to try to break what it is that I have created. Putting the code through the ringer to see what would happen if I did certain things under different conditions. You will then need to start implanting what it is that you have created and do further testing to make sure that what you have done fits together with your total system. You can have created a killer code that will jump through hoops and go over the moon, but then have it not work with the rest of the system. To what then is this code to value to you? It’s worth nothing. Testing and retesting will always need to take place to make sure everything fits together well.
The maintenance will always be an issue with writing programs. You will need to make sure that you have a help desk trained in helping others to maneuver around what it is that you have created. This helps to lead to further customer satisfaction, happy customers to you means more money in your pocket. Understanding that business environment changes constantly and you will need to be sure what you have created will fit the needs of your users. You will at times need to update code that you have written to meet any type of demand of the growing environment of your business.
Every year billions of dollars are wasted in faulty written code. There is no need for this. Taking these simple suggestions and applying them into your business will make all the difference in the long run. Having a plan set forth from the start will give you direction and not having to constantly wonder what you should be doing or what others around you should be doing. Testing the code that is written will help you see if there is anything that you have missed in any portion of development, and maintaining the program so that it works consistently will make customers come back for more all of the time. The goal in all of this is to help you cut your expenses and make you money.

Monday, January 21, 2008

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System is a key part to the success of any business. A CRM helps you understand the buying behavior of your customers, their wants and also their needs. Imagine if you will that you owned your own Bank. With a CRM tool you track how each customer uses your banking services. Such as what time of the month they withdraw money from a checking or savings account, where they shop at, and the amount both you and your spouse make each month. You will also know what how much debt they are in with car loans, home mortgages, and maybe you might be able to determine how many children they have and what ages they are. You might be saying to yourself right now, "That's great, why should I care?" Here is why, you now have a leading edge in marketing your services to that person.
Say you know that Mr. and Mrs. Jones have two children, and your system has recorded that they have had a child about every two years, and each time they have a child they set up a College Savings Fund for that child. The system knows that it is about two years since they have had their last child. Would it not be an opportunistic time send the Jones Family a reminder that they need a College Savings Fund that will benefit their future child? Of course it would!
Now lets make things a little more interesting. Your system begins to notice an irregularity in the deposit amount that is made by Mr. Jones each month both the savings and checking account. The deposit amount has dropped $3,000 a month, what has happened? It would be easy to determine through past data that Mr. Jones is no longer depositing a pay check, meaning he has lost his job. An investment opportunity would be just the ticket for Mr. Jones right at this moment, because you know he has a family and that he probably wants to secure his families financial future. Not only are you able to provide your services, but more importantly provide a need for the Jones Family.
Lets broaden our interests outside of just the Jones Family for a bit and begin to look at the bank as a whole. You begin to see that allot of your customers are withdrawing money from ATM's that are outside of your network. This will help you determine that you need to spread your network coverage, and also that you need to send some sort of incentive to your customers so that they will stay loyal to you and to your bank and not go to another bank where they think they could get better service. You have now just kept your customers loyal as well as expanding your coverage area. You could also run ads letting the public know that you are growing and that you are able to provide better coverage verses what their bank is able to provide them.
Lets return our attention back to the Jones Family once again. Your system is seeing allot of purchases from an Online Adult Book Store made by the families credit card. By checking previous information on purchases made on the card, you see that no purchases have ever been made to that type of institution before, and that they typically use that credit card to buy Christian Books, and other related items. You are now able to freeze the credit card and contact the Jones family to check to see if they have had their credit cards stolen from them. Sure enough they did have their credit card stolen and you were able to take action before damage was done.
By using this CRM system you were able to help the Jones family through credit card theft, Mr. Jones losing his job, setting up a College Savings Fund, and help your whole customer basis in setting up access to ATM's that would have been normally outside of their coverage area. A question may now come up that is, "Do I know to much information about my clients?" The answer is no. Why? Look at what you were able to accomplish in helping your customers. You are developing your bank to better adapt with their needs, and leave them with a feeling of assurance that you are looking out for their best interests.
By learning more about CRM systems you will get to know who your customers are, grow your business, and be more competitive in your market. If you are not now currently implementing this system I would strongly suggest taking immediate action in doing so.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Porter's 5 forces

Currently in the video renting market buying power is high. There are many stores to choose from as well as online locations to choose where to rent videos from. Suppliers power when new movies are released are high, and tapper off when the movie has been released for sometime and the general consumer is waiting for what is new to hit the shelves. Currently online markets are perceived as a high threat to many video retailers. Many consumers hate waiting in line or have had a negative experience in purchasing in store so they go online to rent their movies from several online retailers. Apple is now revolutionising the market with the capability to rent movies through your itunes then being able to watch it on your ipod, or itv for a limited amounts of days. For anyone trying to break into the business of being a video rental vendor has to provide some type of new experience that others are not. Redbox, who's owned by McDonald's, has done a fantastic job in marketing their new video rental systems. They are able to put a RedBox's anywhere where they can get permission. With little to no maintenance and with a very usable interface this makes the ideal solutions for not having to hire a store stuff, and having to have a very limited call center to take comments, questions, and other general customer concerns. Redbox also does extensive email campaigns to show when new movies are coming out, and what types of specials they are offering. Besides Redbox you also have Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Netflix, and soon to be Apple, as the main competitors in the video rental industry. Blockbuster adapted the idea that Netflix has with being able to rent online. One advantage that Blockbuster has is that if the DVD is defective in anyway, you are able to go to a store and swap it out for a new DVD. With Netflix you do not have such the convenience, but rarely these issues do arise. I think that each company is listening to the consumers thoughts and concerns, because the buyer power is so high. They are wanting to provide the best possible service so that they can generate repeat business, and more revenue for their company. If you could find a leading edge that no one else has in the industry you would be able to jump to the top of the lead competitors and be able to stick around and fight for more of an edge in the market to take away their customers and add them to be your new loyal customers. Porter's five forces is an invaluable tool in when looking to see what you can do in order to get into an industry. You need to look at all five key forces that help drive a business so that you can make money, and have a successful business. If you do not look at the five factors then you can easily find yourself in financial ruin. 90% of all new businesses fail within the first month due to the lack of knowledge of Porter's principals. They are a key for anyone deciding to start a new business, or to grow the one that they already have.

Monday, January 14, 2008

My Future Career

Since the beginning of this semester I have began to think long and hard on what it is that I truly would like to do with the rest of my life. I have always been enthralled with law enforcement and also with accounting. Reading through the assignment that was given helped me realize that I would be able to bring the two together. For the moment doing accounting work for the FBI or ATF seems like a very exciting career choice.
LDSBC does offer an Accounting Certificate which will indeed help me on my way in getting my CPA. I will also be able to take many courses in Information Systems that will give me an edge over most in the practical involvement of technology in real world environments. 
The IT skills that I will need to acquire will be to have a great understanding in Accounting Information Systems, Database Management and Design, Spreadsheet Modeling, Network Security, and learn how to do extensive research. 
I like to travel and would be willing to go anywhere the government would like to send me. Searching on Monster.com, the most promising job that I was able to find was in Vienna, VA working for the Department of Treasury, Financial Crimes Division as a Information Technology Specialist. The salary ranges from $80,000 to $120,000. However I would have had to work for the government already in previous positions to obtain this job for the Department of Treasury. It seems that the job that I am looking for is not readily available on Monster.com and that I would need to go directly to the FBI or ATF websites and check for openings. 
I am sure as I continue to develop my skills, and learn more about various fields of work, I will have a better idea what it is that I would like to do for a career.