One of Those Days

Plugging in... 

I'm sure the reader has had "one of those technology days". Want to read about the Tutor's?

It all began with downloading, saving, and attempting to print some PDF (portable document format) documents. Opting for the electronic version of some financial papers, not knowing how large they were, proved to be the downfall that led to "one of those days".

The Tutor's fabulous HP 4050T Laserjet printer with 8 mebagbytes of memory could not handle some of the PDFs - a simple error message: insufficient memory. Huh? With 8 meg of memory, this is the first time in over 12 years on this printer that the Tutor received this message.

Tutor's not totally frustrated yet. There is another printer in the office, an inkjet. Oh yes, the ink cartridges needed replacing, and thankfully, 4 new ones arrived yesterday from Inkfarm.com. So, five more minutes to unpack the ink cartridges (you ink jet readers know the hermetically sealed packaging can be challenging). Once again praying to the Technology powers-that-be, clicked the PRINT button for the inkjet... and it too fell short of printing the lengthy PDFs. The first 4 pages of document one print, and then nothing. And the Tutor does mean nothing. No printing, no error, no canceling the print job, NADA!

Frustration is here, head is now in a point. Computer and both printers must be shut down completely to re-set and purge the faulty data streams. A few more minutes pass... and the Tutor is back up and about to try changing a few printer settings: changed the resolution, changed the memory usage, changed to black ink on the inkjet, tried 1 of 3 HP alternate printer drivers. And one final change: tried to print a different PDF document from same company. Partial success, several pages printed on the HP Laserjet, nothing on the inkjet. Partial in this case, was still a bust.

Results are in: the US Postal Service wins after wasting time, and too much paper. The documents are in now in the mail to the Tutor but the Tutor's head is STILL in a point! And I know the documents will be here in the morning, with nary a pointed head in sight.
 
ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, is there an ALTERNATIVE method available before head juts into point, and is it turned on?

PS It is rumored that some clients LIKE to see the TUTOR sweat...

Unplugged

iPad, ePub, iTunes, eBooks

Plugging in...

What a title, just to write about one method of using an iPad to borrow books from the library. I have to say... using a library card is still simpler. But let the reader be the judge of that!.

Distributed by the Danvers Peabody Institute Library

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, have you TAPPED correctly, and is it turned on?

Unplugged

Running Around the Office

Plugging in...

A recent Microsoft Office 2010 installation proved to be an exercise in skill and imagination. One would think Microsoft had this installation nailed, after so many previous versions of Office. Here's what happened: the Office 2010 installation failed due to lack of space on the intended laptop hard drive. OK, so what happened to checking for space BEFORE the installation begins? Anyway, the failed installation claimed it "rolled back" whatever changes it made.

After a short but thorough hard drive cleanup to achieve more free space, the installation appeared to proceed about 75% of the way, until the dreaded error message: error 1311, source file not found on E:\sku111.cab. Hmm.

The Tutor scoured the installation CD for this file, and true enough, it did NOT exist on the CD. So where and why was it asking for this file? After much thinking, internet searching, and trying other installation ideas, a tiny light bulb went off in the back of the Tutor's head. The laptop had Microsoft Office 2003 installed on it. Could it be that the missing file was the on the Microsoft Office 2003 installation disk?  BINGO. Once the Microsoft Office 2003 CD was inserted when the error message occurred looking for the sku111.cab file, the installation proceeded without a hitch. The original Microsoft Office 2010 CD was not inserted again during the installation. Why Microsoft, why?

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, and is it turned on?

Unplugged