Bios’s can be reset in Dell Dimensions using the following obscure key combo –
Turn on Caps Lock, Scroll Lock and Num lock.
Press Alt-E, Alt-F and Alt-B.
The Dell will then reboot with factory defaults.
As our Lotus Notes based helpdesk system needs java installed to work properly we needed to install Java on all the customer machines. Eventually I managed to get the unattended installation working by using the following command.
pathtoexe.exe /s /v”/qn ADDLOCAL=ALL /L %temp%\javasetup.log REBOOT=Suppress”
Note that the space and case is critical. My next step is to work out how to tell if the software is already installed and only do the above step if it isn’t. Should be fairly easy to do just not had a chance to look at it yet.
Anyone had any (good) experiences with installation of an Avaya phone system? I’m just wondering if we’re the unfortunate ones to have the worst ever telephone “upgrade” or whether this is normal. I can’t go into specifics here but I’m spending about 50% of my work schedule (since the beginning of December) on supporting and troubleshooting the phones.
I’m thinking the phone system needs to be upgraded again – but this time using a piece of string and a couple of empty baked bean cans (although full ones would probably still give better service right now.)
You can now chat from within the gmail interface (so no need to open another program) – or at least you can if your contacts also have had this feature enabled in their gmail account. My first gmail account has had this option enabled but my main google account that I use on a day to day basis (as it contains all helsby.net emails) does not have it activated yet. The strange thing is that you can initiate a chat invite from a working account (and I was hoping that would activate my secondary account for chatting) but the secondary account does not receive the invite in the mail box – I’m guessing it probably goes to the chat client – if it has been downloaded.
It will be interesting to see how this progresses. At the moment I’m guessing it is text only IM similar to the web interfaces to MSN and ICQ.
In related news I’ve been setting up a Live Communication Server for a client and the Communicator program looks pretty good. The annoying thing is that I can’t see any documentation on how to get hold of the non-trial version of the client – it apparently is free with licences for the server so you would expect to get the media for the client with the server – but nooooooo…….
I signed up for a beta invite to cocomment this morning and got an invite code a couple of hours later. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in MovableType (yet) but it does work in WordPress and blogger. I’ll start using this to track most of my blog posts on the web when possible. I did find that the default installation of redirectremover extension screwed up the bookmarklet (and also screwed up my url123.com bookmarklet too) so disabling that made it all work properly.
Aha – I fell into the gotcha when I searched for the adminpak for windows2003 and it wouldn’t install. Thats because I’m running service pack 1 and instead I needed to download the adminpak for sp1. Would have been nice if the original page pointed this out as opposed to having to look under the “people also downloaded” section of the webpage.
Tonight is the Superbowl and I’m really looking forward to it. It’s the first time that I’ve been able to see it live (as it’s normally on about 11pm or later in the UK) AND the Steelers are in the finals (and going to win of course). Seeing as though I’m an adopted Steelers fan by marriage that makes it more fun. Kristen’s Dad is at the game so if you see a bloke with a ‘tache (ok, admittedly that is about half the crowd) and a flashing hat, that might be him – we’re going to keep a close eye on the crowd. Friday night Kristen and I put together one of my Christmas presents – a Steelers blanket throw so we can snuggle up and keep warm.
It turns out that if Word does not spell check a document and you get a message that Word has spell checked parts of the document (sorry can’t remember the exact error message) you can get Word to check the whole thing by selecting all the text (ctrl-A) and then going to the Tools menu, selecting Language (of all things) and then selecting and unselecting the option “Do not spell check selected text”
Took me quite a while to figure that one out as I was looking under spelling options and custom.dic’s etc – not under languages!
Topgear try to kill a toyata pickup is a funny 16 minute clip where they try all sorts of things to destroy the truck. It would be really funny to see what happened if they had called the AA out after leaving the truck in the sea. The things they do to the truck are pretty amazing although I’m not sure about the legality of driving the truck on the road after some of the things they do to it – the bodywork looks pretty dangerous. I must say that it sure beats the advert that they shown on tv at the moment where they drop stuff over the truck and it drives off – this video is much more extensive. Thanks to Day in the life of a Security Investigator
My results:
I am Superman
| You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Via Ron
Apologies for the awful html code for this post – tables, uppercase tags, no closing slashes for br tags etc – tut tut tut 🙂