Monday Tips – Off Screen Windows in XP
This is a problem some people experience. You lose a window off screen and you have now way to get it back. The window could be off screen for any number of reasons. The following trick only works in Windows XP.
But you can get the window back with a little magic. You want to head down to the task bar and right click on the item you lost. When the context menu comes up select the option "Move."
This will place your cursor in the window bar at the top of the missing program. Now you can just drag your mouse back on the screen and the window is back.
If you just get a cursor back that means the window is below the taskbar. You will need to use the arrow keys to get the window back. Just hold the Up arrow key and the window will move up. You can use the other arrows to move the window in the corresponding direction.
Adding Value To Your IT Career
In the world of It there are a few ways to add value to your skills. The top three ways are experience, education, and certifications. A good mix of these three will help a person further their career in the IT field. No one of these items would be good enough in our current economic environment. Not that I don’t like my job, it’s just that this year is the last year COMPTIA is going to allow three of it’s certifications to be valid for a lifetime without continuing education credits.
For me what I am missing from my resume is some certifications. Why should I invest time into studying, preparing and taking these exams? I feel that right now is the perfect time for me because of my experience in the IT field and timing. I do realize that I should have spent time in years past working on achieving the COMPTIA Certifications. One of the reasons why I didn’t was because I was selling myself short on how useful they were. Another reason was that I didn’t have the experience to be able to feel confident about taking the exam.
I have already taken The essentials part of the Exam on September 7th, 2010 and scored an 828 out of 900. I was very surprised at how much I knew about the IT field. I would like to say I was studying, but I was more of a review of concepts, technology, and vocabulary (aka buzzwords). I would have take the Practical part of the exam already, but I am waiting a few more weeks to be eligible at my job to be reimbursed for the cost.
A+ Certification
The A+ Certification has been around since 1993 and is an industry standard. If you are looking to break into the IT field this is the entry level certification you should go for. It will test your knowledge on hardware and software concepts. You can face questions about printers, basic networking concepts, and other related topics. This certification is most relevant to people who want to enter the Desktop Support or Help Desk Support sub field in IT.
The reason this Certification is important is because it communicates to people with-in the IT industry that you have a basic grasp of concepts of technology and what is expected of a technician. It doesn’t automatically make you a better IT Technician than someone who doesn’t have one. A piece of paper that says you passed two tests doesn’t take the place for knowledge or experience. If you have a good combination of the three that is the best way to be the best candidate for any job in IT.
Experience
When I had a chance in 2007 to take some classes and take the exam I was against it because I didn’t see the value of the Certification. In the years since I’ve been on a variety of interviews and it became apparent the value of this certification. While I was taking the exam I was very confident about my answers to the majority of the questions.
Experience was the major key that allowed me to succeed at the A+ exam. There were many questions that I answered quickly because I experienced the problems at work or ran into the problems myself. There was one question I knew only because I had to deal that specific printer issue at my day job. I am looking forward to taking part 2 in a couple of weeks. I know I will pass, but that won’t stop me from doing some reviewing before hand.
Monday tips–Restoring some classic icons
When I reinstall Windows I am usually missing some very import icons on the desktop. I like to have icons for My Computer and My Documents on my desktop, it’s just what looks normal to me. Now we’ll walk you through how to get the icons back to your desktop.
Windows 7:
You will want to right click on your desktop and choose “Personalize”
Next on the left hand side of the screen you want to choose “Change desktop icons”
Now you can decide which icons you want on your desktop and which ones to get rid of by checking or unchecking each box.
Monday Tips – Removing the Delete Confirmation box
On every fresh install of Windows I have done one of the first things I do is disable the Delete confirmation box every time I delete a file. I find the confirmation box a bit annoying, plus it makes deleting files a bit quicker.
Yes I know I’m deleting a file and I don’t need to be asked if I am sure I want to delete it.
Pig out on RAM–The Firefox problem
I’ve been testing Firefox 4 Beta for a while, but over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed it seems to be bogging my system down. I finally decided to check it’s ram usage. I open up Task Manager to find that it is taking over half of my ram. Now it is not Firefox per say but it is “plugin-container.exe*32” Which is described as a Plugin container for Firefox. I am pretty sure if I had more available RAM it would have used more. Since my system is only running 2 GBs 1.3 GB of that was all it could tie up. I do plan on adding more RAM to my system.
Firefox seemed to be having issues loading webpages that run flash media, like videos on a page. I don’t know if it is the problem is on Flash’s end or Firefox 4’s end. I am going to do some more investigating to figure this out.
Some things I plan on trying will be:
- Install a new version of flash
- Create a new profile
- Clear out my browser cache
I’ll report back on the results and if any changes have been made.
Ping–Social Network Overload
At Apples press event on September 1st they announced iTunes 10 and Ping, along with a range of new iPods. Ping is a social network built right into iTunes that lets you follow users or artists like twitter to see what music you like. It allows you to share information that you purchased song x from iTunes. Why would you use Ping when you can use twitter to do the exact same thing? Sure it is not the same thing, but if you already have twitter you already have a user base instead of building one from scratch again. Since I purchase all my music from Amazon I would not have a reason to join Ping.
With facebook, twitter, and blogging my social media dance card is full. I don’t want to join a a social media network that is just dedicated to music. I like music as much as the next guy, but I don’t know why Apple is trying to be the next facebook or twitter. I guess time will tell if they can utilize 160 million iTunes users to make a run at facebook. Since there is no integration with facebook Apple now has a walled garden social media client in iTunes. How long can Appleland survive while they refuse to play with others?
