Preparing for Graduate School
Posted by: David
So, you're thinking about graduate school...
Some of you might find yourself about to graduate with your bachelor degree and you are thinking what is next, are you really ready for the world? Others might be thinking it is time to get the extra education they might need to advance from their current position. An even less likely option is that you are still in your early years of college, or just searching the internet looking up graduate school as a high school student.
Things to consider
First of all, you need to know when to apply for graduate school. With some schools it can be as early as Jan. 1 for the Fall semester or as late as August for the Fall semester. If you already have a school in mind, check their deadline for applications and make sure you haven't already missed it. It is best to start working on your graduate preparation in your first semester of your last year in undergraduate if you are going straight to graduate school. If you plan on working first, wait until after you graduate to begin preparing, you really don't need to rush anyway but since you will be taking a test it will be important you are still sharp from school.
When looking for a graduate school the most important thing you can possibly look for is that the school offers a program you want to take. Take your time when looking at schools, don't just browse what programs are offered by the schools, but really look deep. Look at the classes required by a program you are interested at a school, this can differentiate two similar programs.
The next thing to look for is either cost or location. It depends on what you want more, or if location is important or not. If you are looking for a school that is close, it might be worth paying more for. Also, with more graduate programs offering online programs location is becoming less of an issue. If you are taking your graduate degree online, it will be okay to find a school further away but keep it in a few hours driving distance because you never know when you might need to make an emergency trip to classes, or for paperwork.
You will also want to look at the admissions requirements for the school you are looking at. This will be a great way to determine how your chances will be with enrolling at the school. The best way to get accepted into graduate school is to have great undergraduate grades. For most schools, there is a minimum score required to enter. This score is typically based off a calculation where your undergrad GPA and your GRE test scores are given a multiplier and then added (250x + y = acceptance score, for example). If you have a 4.0 undergrad GPA you are going to be 25% closer to being accepted than someone who only has a 3.0 undergrad GPA.
Other things to consider...
- Admission Requirements - These are often looking for specific courses and degrees. If you don't meet these you might be required to take introductory courses.
- Professors - ratemyprofessor.com
- Administration (if you are familiar with them)
- Scholarships and grants - look for available scholarships or grants before applying
- Search for reviews of the program, or seek out people for their opinion on the school
- Course settings - Will you be required to attend classes or will they be offered online?
- Thesis or Project - While this isn't necessary to worry about at first, consider what you would be willing to do. Most schools offer the ability to do a group project or write a thesis in order to graduate.
Now what do I do to apply?
- Continue working on your undergraduate degree - don't start thinking ahead! Or don't put your work aside if you are already a full time worker.
- I suggest that you get a study book for whatever test you need to take about a month before you are scheduled to take your test. The Princeton Review typically has good study material. These books don't just give you an idea of the material that will be covered but will also give you hints and tips on how to take the tests, such as methods to save time and score higher!
- Schedule your GRE, or other required graduate admissions test such as the GMAT for at least 2-3 months before your application deadline. Give yourself more time if you think you might need to take more than one test in order to be accepted.
- Fill out your FAFSA if you will need financial aid! This is crucial! Do not use sights like FAFSA.COM that charge money. MAKE SURE TO USE HTTP://WWW.FAFSA.GOV !!!!!
- Make sure and study for your test! These tests are not easy. Use the study book you bought, or at least use online resources to study. It is important you do this plenty for the couple of weeks leading up to your test.
- Get a great sleep the night before your test. Eat your breakfast and arrive about an hour early for your test with your study material. Study just a bit more before you go in - it could only help. Also if you get lost finding your testing place the extra hour will come in very handy.
- You will receive your scores in about a few weeks. As soon as you receive your scores you can start applying to schools based on what schools your scores and grades will allow you too. Not many schools would be willing to take someone who has scores or grades below their minimums. Do not hesitate to apply, it is plenty OK to apply to graduate school several months in advance of the application deadline.
- Once you submit your application you should immediately gather other materials that might be required by the school for your application such as your undergraduate transcript, your letters of recommendation, career plan or even your portfolio.
- Now it is time to wait to be accepted. If you don't hear anything before July 15th for the Fall semester you really should call the schools that you applied to and check your application status.
My next post will be on what to do once you've been accepted.
Dameware host actively refusing connection fix
Posted by: David
The issue?
You can't connect to a client using dameware because it is actively refusing your request.
Resolution
Go into the device manager and delete the dameware mirror driver which is listed with the display drivers.
If that does not work consult dameware support to make sure you don't have a network issue causing the issue.
Video: Share files between Windows 7 and your virtual Windows PC
Posted by: David
What you are trying to accomplish
Share a file from your Windows 7 computer to your Windows XP virtual machine (or other computer).
GoToMeeting thoughts
Posted by: David
Why use go to meeting?
- Cut your costs. No longer do you need to go out and do training, or invite people to your buildings to train them on your software. Simply host a webinar and invite all of the attendees to watch and listen from their comfort. No more travel fees! Sometimes you can't avoid travel, but there isn't much a great power point couldn't help with.
- Remote tools. If you need to support some helpless person who you have more trouble than ever with in giving remote assistance, gotomeeting is really simple. You don't need their IP, or hostname, just make sure they can read their e-mail, and send them an e-mail invitation. Change the presenter to them so you can see their screen and request control of their machine to start working on it.
- Simple. Even some of your more simple minded employees or customers can figure out how to use it. If they can't figure it out the first time, the help and manual for gotomeeting provides a great resource tool to get it. If you don't get gotomeeting, you don't get much. Sorry.
Some problems
- When things go wrong, they really go wrong. Hosting a webinar? Easy enough right? Well, not if you change the conference phone number without alerting half of your attendees. Make sure you keep all stakeholders informed on what is going on when you are hosting webinars, specially if they are more important than most.
- Requires a software download. The hardest part about getting a helpless remote user help is walking them through the install. If someone is completely helpless, then you know how hard it can be to walk them through installing something. This can be a bear, but if you are dealing with someone who knows how to use their computer, it should only take a minute or two (depending on connection).
- Chaotic. Get 70 people on your webinar with a teleconference. You sure are saving a lot of money, but you know how people can be. They refuse to mute their phone and you can hear them talking in the background. You can mute them from your gotomeeting, but whenever someone joins you need to keep reminding them or mute everyone. At time it can definetly be inconvenient.
Overall Thoughts
Gotomeeting is good software. It was excellent software to organize your web meeting, and with the use of a conference line can get confusing at time, but offers power that you use to only dream about. It cuts your travel costs a ton. Move that money in your budget to give you employees new monitors and ergonomic keyboards so they can be more comfortable working.
As long as you keep everyone informed, and are willing to help people who aren't familiar with computer gotomeeting can be very helpful. It is when you start having issues that things can get very bad very fast. Chaotic was a good word for it. Once things get bed they tend to stay bad for a while. Things get disorganized quickly. Game plan before you start, and be prepared for anything. If you are prepared, gotomeeting can be a great asset, otherwise it can be a complete hassle.
Before you start using gotomeeting corporate wide, make sure you have people who are familiar with using the software to be able to give some support. You should do this with all software really. However with something as important as web meetings with Chief Officers, it is particularly important you have someone on staff who knows how to lend a hand if something were to go wrong.
Another great Firefox add on: Extra Bookmark Rows
Posted by: David
So, you want more rows for your bookmarks?
There is an add on for that if you are a firefox user (and why wouldn't you be?). This add on when installed will automatically create another row for your bookmarks whenever you run out of room on your current bookmark row. This comes in handy when you don't want to fool with organizing your bookmarks in the bookmarks drop down menu.
If your lazy, like most people - this add on is for you.
If you want to keep your complex organizational system for your bookmarks in the drop down menu, don't worry about it.
How do you get it?
Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6937
From there just click on + Add to Firefox, and it will download and install for you.
When it is done installing it will ask for you to restart Firefox, go ahead and do that so you can start using your now extended bookmark rows!
How to use 404 errors to make a URL shortener
Posted by: David
404 errors can be used for more than appologies
A project I created and implemented about 6 months ago was a simple URL shortener. I didn't go looking on how to make a URL shortener, I thought of this on my own, and while others might have done this before I was able to create and master this system.
How you can do it
- Make sure you know a little about PHP and MySQL, these two things are crucial.
- First, design a database that can hold a list of url's that people will enter, and also give each one an id. In the most simplistic setup you should only one table in your database with this information.
- Now, set up your site to allow a custom PHP page for the 404 error page.
- Write the PHP for your 404 page to get only the filename, or the part after the last forwardslash / on the url, for example it would be "touoik" if the URL someone entered was http://www.fake.foo/bar/touoik.
- Now after you can put the file name into a string variable, use this to search your database for the id of the url. Since this should be set up as a auto incrementing primary key you will be having numbers as the file name, and they should correlate with the id of a certain URL. Return a URL, or error with your query, then use some HTML to forward to the URL your query returned.
- The last bit is to create a form that will allow people to enter their URL to submit it to the database. The best thing to do with this form is to make sure that it delivers you a valid URL. Google some ways to find valid URLs with PHP.
It's that simple, but you can do so much more
Some simple ideas that I used in my URL shortener I made with 404.
- Limit an IP address to only making a certain number of short URLs a day. Do this by adding another column to your URL table in the database and editing your 404 query to check the count for a particular day.
- Another option I gave users was the ability to enable a preview of the URL someone was being forwarded to. To do this I added a bit of code when someone submitted a URL to check for the title of the webpage that the URL was for, then stored that in the URL database. Then on the 404 page I set up a check for the query to see if it was enabled for previews, if so I would put a delay in the HTML forward and display the page URL and give the person viewing the 404 the option to go back.
- Click tracking was another feature that I had enabled. For this I created another database table with the short URL primary ID as the foreign key and set up columns for the click ID as the primary key and the date clicked, and IP from as the unique attributes for the click. This was a little more complex but I added another section onto the site that allowed someone to input the short URL, or file name and they could see the history of the short URL click.
- Private and secure forwarding was provided by setting up the 404 page to check to see if passwords were enabled for the short URL. If so, I would have the 404 site show a form to submit the password. When submitted it would check for the password and URL ID. If both matched, you would be forwarded. I also set up the click history section to allow someone to make their URL history private.
- Limited redundant URLs to save space in the database. I used the submit form to check the database to see if a public short version of this URL already existed and if so I just gave that person the same short URL that was already in the database without creating another entry.
- Created lots more entries by using a higher base counting system and converted the URL ID's into these higher base numbers to provide shorter short URLs. For example, 10 would be "A" and 11 would be "B", which is similar to other base systems, but I used a base system that extended all the way to using all digits and capital and lower case letters.
Adding a shortcut to file explorer when opening or browsing to select files in Windows 7
Posted by: David
What are you trying to do?
You are trying to get a network location on your file explorer as a button that you only have to click on once to find the location. This area is known as my places in Windows XP ( also Favorites in Windows 7) and is very good for creating shortcuts to network drive locations where you might need to browse through several folders every time other wise.
Just look, this is how you do it
- Find the location of the folder you want to link.
- Drag and drop the folder into the left bar into the favorites area.
Now your folder is linked in the favorites or my places area on your file browser whenever you want to select a file with any program!
Video: Show the developer tab in Office 07 (Word and Excel)
Posted by: David
How to show the developer tab in Office 07.
- Click on the Office button
- Click on Word/Excel Options
- Check the Show Developer tab in ribbon option
- Hit OK to apply
What is the developer tab
The developer tab is seldom used by casual users of Office products which is why it was removed from the toolbar by default. However those familiar with macros and security options with Office files are very familiar with the options provided by the developer tab.
Using spiceworks to see old comments from a particular person and or from a particular day
Posted by: David
Possible problems that might have you thinking about finding old tickets
- Someone is trying to see if they worked on a particular day
- You are trying to see what anyone said on a particular day
- You are trying to find out what someone has been saying
- You want to know what Public or Private comments someone has been using in tickets
Solution:
- In spiceworks click on the reporting tab
- Click on New Report
- Make sure "Build this report using SQL" is checked
- Type in the following code....
To find comments from someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
The code above will find ticket comments by (users.id='12'), that were created on 9-9-09 (strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'), and they will be displayed in descending order by the ticket number an limited to a number of 500 results. To find the comments made by a particular person you will have to find their user id in the database.
To find comments from anyone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
If you notice, this is the exact same code as before, but without the users.id='12'. The code above will find all comments dated 9-9-09.
To find only private comments by someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND comments.is_public = 'f'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
The code above is the same as the first code but with the addition of AND comments.is_public = 'f'. This means you will have all ticket comments by a particular person (12) on a particular day (9-9-09) that were false as to being public (aka private).
To find only public comments by someone on a particular day
SELECT tickets.id as Ticket, comments.body as Note, strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%m', comments.created_at) as Day FROM users, comments, tickets
WHERE tickets.id = comments.ticket_id
AND tickets.created_by = users.id
AND comments.created_by = '12'
AND comments.is_public = 't'
AND strftime('%Y-%m-%d', comments.created_at) = '2009-09-09'
ORDER BY tickets.id DESC
LIMIT 0, 500
To find the public comments just change the comments.is_public = 'f' to = 't'.
Tip for success
Don't limit yourself to the code that I have above to find the information you are looking for. Open up SQLlite and try playing around with it and adding different parameters to the query's.
Also, if you want to find your users ids easier than manually opening up your database just make an SQL report with the following code.
Select * from users
This will list all of your users with all of their information. Find the one you want to use and insert their user id into the code I provided above.
How the smart grid can save you money!
Posted by: David
What is the smart grid?
The smart grid is currently a concept that is being developed in order to be placed into the electrical (and other) grids to better monitor and control resources.
How will it work?
We are not yet certain, but to break it down into slow mode for you I have a scenario.
- A person is using $300 worth of electricity every month
- The smart grid technology can be installed, and now the usage can be monitored
- Now that person who is spending $300 a month on electricity sees exactly where that money is coming from
- Once you see what devices are costing you the most money, you can more easily manage your power with those devices
- Better yet, you could possibly program your home through the smart grid to help control your usages. This is very similar to parental controls you might put on a child's computer to keep them from using it at certain periods of the day or for certain lengths. Although it wont turn your device off while you are using it or stop you from using it if you want to, it will help manage costs by putting devices into a lower power state or just turning them off when not being used.
- Your smart grid can be connected to the internet, and you can compare your usages to other peoples. You can see comments about certain types of usages and even get personalized information on how to improve your usage.
How exactly does it save you money?
- Your devices won't be using as much electricity since you can program your house to turn off devices when they are not being used.
- You can set up your house to only use what you need if you start approaching your budget limit for utilities. If you are already at your budget, you could tell your house to conserve as much electricity as possible and not allow any usage except for what you deem to be essential.
- The networking aspects will give you better ideas on how to manage your utilities. Communicating with other people will help provide you with better ideas on how to help save money in your own home. You could perhaps even download and use someone else's utility program that they designed for themselves if you thought it could help you and they decided to share their program.
- Also, the network ability will allow for the personalize tips and ideas to get you moving in the right track for cutting your costs. If it looks like your heating costs are worse than last month but the temperature hasn't gotten any colder then perhaps you need to make sure you keep the doors and windows shut better, as well as check the seals around the house for any leaks.
Don't be afraid of the smart grid
Obviously there will be a very Big Brother feel from this system whenever it is introduced but it is definitely in the best interest of everyone, and the planet! If you think it is a security risk that someone could get your grid data then you are right, but beyond maybe a locked privacy fence what is stopping people from coming up and reading your meter now, or hacking into the utility databases? The same work would have to be done whenever the smart grid is released. Just because almost all of the information is going digital doesn't mean it is much easier to get. A hacker will still have to hack the database of a utility company or personally come read your meters. I don't expect people to start trying to steal this information anymore, because there doesn't seem to be much of a need for it anyway. If there was much of a need for it now there would be more people snooping through my back yard trying to read my meters.