OOps, ya broke it...

Because I forgot to mention that you shouldn't be doing that!

I cannot tell you how many times I've run into people unqualified trying to fix a problem that they don't fully understand... Just about everyone does it at one time or another in their life! Not long ago, I tried to work on my car a little bit, and ended up making the problem worse (lesson: don't attempt to fix car - ask someone who knows about cars to do it!).

But still, it is tempting isn't it? Today at work, I kept seeing people walk up to the printers and start pushing buttons, loading paper, and the notorious "resending the print job over and over again."

Since this is quite annoying, makes me look like a lazy computer lab assistant, and can easily lead to paper jams, I thought, "Why do people keep doing this, even though I rush over each time to fix the problems they have made?"

And then, it dawned on me as a student once again informed me that the "it's probably just that the color printer takes a while to warm up," (as I read which tray is the source of the paper jam)... People believe that they truly know the answer to these computer problems, but in reality, in their "attempt" to fix the computer, they make the problem ten times worse!

So, without being rude (and just telling them "ALWAYS ask the lab assistant") how do I communicate that same idea... The best way, is always the easiest... Make a simple 8.5x11 inch poster! "Document didn't print? Paper low? Blinking Lights? See your handy lab assistant for help!"

I posted, after approval of my boss, two of these posters (which were stylized a bit more than can be described in text form) - one at the set of black and white laser jet printers, and one by the solid-state color printer. Have a clear line of communication about policies and exactly what we would like the users to do is really the best way to keep the patrons of Support Services doing what we need them to do.


Image of my poster publication.
It's missing some fonts in my "at home" version :(

OSX86: Natively!

When I returned to college, I had a few things in mind on what I was going to do with my machines to get everything running the way I wanted it to be, and I had a few tests that I wanted to run on some of the boxes to troubleshoot some potentially failed PSUs or Motherboards.

Turned out, that my computers were all fine, accept for two of the power supplies failed! That was annoying, but with the purchase of one 400 W PSU from a roommate of mine, I was doing okay. But, I did make the mistake of leaving a few hard drives at home, one of which is critical for the boot process of Windows 2000 Pro.

Sooo... Seeing as how I had no ability to utilize that box, I decided to install OSX86 to it! It took me a while to get all the hardware configurations right (since I played around in BIOS when testing out the PSUs), but it worked easily!

I made one mistake of doing an upgrade from 10.4.5 to 10.4.6, which screwed up the boot process (note to self: let's not do that again), but other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing. I'm loving the dashboard even more, and I've been playing around a little with X11 in OSX86, with limited success. Surprisingly, X11 is quite limited in OSX86, whereas the standard terminal is nearly fully functional!

Since it's so cold in the dorm at this time of year (drafty rooms, with the boilers running at low power), I've been keeping all the computers I can running at maximum CPU output, to help keep the room a little warmer... Hence, I've been running folding@home for a day now, and it's working beautifully. Oddly enough, it's the PPC version... The linux version didn't work at all (that's where I noticed X11 was fairly limited).


BTW: You can see my folding running behind the dashboard screenshot, and you can view my folding stats here!