Office 2007 Rollout - Almost Done

Thanks to the help of our incredible IT Staff and the courageous team of Office 2007 beta testers, we are almost done rolling out Office 2007. Our goal is to have everyone upgraded by this Friday, February 13. If you have not completed the software upgrade yet, please let someone on the IT Staff know and we will help you out. We will also be upgrading all conference room systems on Friday.

Some critical reminders about Office 2007:

1) As a rule of thumb PDFs should be the default format for any file sent outside the company (clients, vendors). You can now easily create PDFs from any Office 2007 application.

2) If the client or vendor needs to edit the file and a PDF won't suffice, then make sure you down save the file to Office 2003 unless you are 100% sure the recipient has Office 2007.

3) Most of the essential features (print, save, etc.) are hidden under the round button with windows logo on it in the top left corner of every Office 2007 application. Everything else is found in 'the ribbon'.

For questions about specific applications, please contact the following people:

PowerPoint: Diana Hodges, Casee Erickson
Excel: Greg Sirois, Kirsten Anderberg
Word: Cody Cooper, Katie Beer
Outlook: Matt Laufer, Tyson Nielsen, Jon Nooning

Thanks, and happy computing!

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Happy Birthday Facebook!

At the 5 year mark, Facebook is certainly the most widely adopted social network on the planet, soon to surpass MySpace. Now Mark Zuckerberg and company just need to figure out how to make a profit.

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Celebrate Your Privacy!

Janurary 28, 2009 was an important day in cyberspace. This was the international Data Privacy Day. Your data is important, as is your privacy. Learn how to be smart, and protect both, at this website from Intel.

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Kiss Your Silver Snail Goodbye!

You get into the office, power on your computer, and walk away to grab some coffee. You stop by to talk to Sandy a bit, go back to your desk, and yep, it's still booting up. "Loading personal settings" -- sheesh how many settings do you really have on that thing?! - You walk away again, do some laps around the fourth floor, work up a bit of a sweat and grab a drink. Maybe your computer is booted up now? You stop by to check on it again, this time you see a blank blue screen - it must have a few more minutes to go, so you swing by the third floor to see if anyone is in to chat with (they are a very friendly and lively bunch that are always great to talk to!). After about 5 minutes of chatting you come back to your desk to see your computer finally booted up to the desktop. Hurray! Time to open up Word and get some work done! Oh dear, word is not opening - time for a few more laps.

Does this sound like your daily routine? Do you loathe even turning on your Silver Snail because you know you won't be able to even open a web-browser without having to wait a good 5 min?

Well, we here in IT have heard your cries (as has our budget). Kiss your Silver Snail goodbye!


In the next week we will be rolling out these bad new beasts to 25 lucky (or previously unlucky?) folks! Three have already been rolled out and the initial response has been well received.

We beg of you, please stop hugging us, kissing us and telling us we are your saviors... We are just in IT, it's our job! We would love to give everyone one of these new beasts, but not everyone has had to suffer as badly. Remember everyone, good things come to those that suffer! Err, I mean good things come to those that wait! :)

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Hack Hits the Road - Beware of Zombies

This article has little to do with technology, although it does involve the hacking of an electronic street sign. This is a pretty funny hack if you ask me. Read more.

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Receive News on Your Home Computer. . .in 1981

Wow, pretty telling news piece from 1981 on people using primitive dialup to download the news.

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Denver's Dataless Red Light Cameras

In 2008 Denver installed red light cameras to ticket folks who ran red lights, according to this article there up until now there has been no data to even backup that they are doing their job well.

It's mentioned that in August the cameras were only 83% accurate when Denver agreed that they needed to be 98%+ accurate.

The whole contract sounds like a schetchy deal and unfortunately for the citizens, we are the ones paying the price (though not me... I haven't gotten a ticket for running a red yet!). At $75 a ticket, you'd really want to make sure the equipment you use is being as close to 100% accurate as possible!

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