John’s Technology Blog

I was invited to represent Novell at a recent BYU alumni networking dinner. The purpose of the event was to help students network with experienced professionals to talk about their career paths and the importance of networking in their professional lives.

The event started out with some hors d’oeuvres and uncoordinated mingling. I was able to meet quite a few students and visit with them about their career goals and aspirations. I also met the coordinator for career placement for the technical majors at BYU. We talked about some possibilities of getting Novell some exposure with BYU students. I am really excited to work on improving our relationship and letting the students know of the opportunities and technologies that are available at Novell.

After the mingling was over, we were ushered into a banquet hall at the Gordon B. Hinckley Alumni building where we sat at tables and visited with students that were assigned to our table. I met a lot of talented and exceptional young people who are going to be leaders in their chosen profession.

I was honored to be selected to attend this event. It is always a wonderful thing for me to associate with college students — especially those from my alma mater.

I recently read that google video lets you not only embed a video onto a blog or a webpage, but that you can embed a specified section (starting point) of the video only. This is very useful if you are wanting to highlight only a small part of the video without requiring your readers to go through the entire segment to try to get your point. Take, for example, this following embed code for a clip of my daughter jamming to a made up song:

<embed id=”VideoPlayback” src=”http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7772336859252185649&hl=en&fs=true” style=”width:400px;height:326px” allowFullScreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”> </embed>

Now, if you were to watch that video, it would be a full minute of musical bliss – to a parent or aunt or uncle. However, a stranger that doesn’t really care about my children, may want me to get to the point and only see the segment that I am writing about. In order to specify the starting point of that segment, I simply add the following attribute on the “embed” tag: FlashVars=”initialTime=number” where “number” is the number of seconds from the beginning of the clip. See the code segment below:

<embed id=”VideoPlayback” FlashVars=”initialTime=30″ src=”http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-7772336859252185649&hl=en&fs=true” style=”width:400px;height:326px” allowFullScreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”> </embed>

OK….lets try this out!

I recently came across an easy, online tool that converts your PDF files into an embeddable flash object that can be put right on to your web page.  Instead of requiring a user to click on a PDF link to open a pdf file, just display it right there on the page.

The tool I am most excited about is PDFmenot.com.

You can check out how this friend of mine presents his PDF resume on his website at:  Jon Barclay’s Resume page.

I recently updated my laptop and home computer to Windows XP SP3. I waited several months before making the plunge. I thought that after that amount of time, Microsoft would have most of the major kinks worked out of the Service Pack.

Migrating to SP3 has been the bane of my month. My home computer now has to be reboot at least once a day in order to keep my USB devices and my DVD burner working properly. Other undesirable side effects have crept up also.

My laptop cannot hibernate or sleep without wreaking havoc on my network connectivity. I found that once I came out of a sleep or hibernate mode, I would get a “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services” error.

I tried several combinations of service restarts, etc to get it to work again, but to no avail. I would always end up rebooting my laptop to get back on the network.

The other day, I searched through more threads regarding other suffering from the same issue – and there are plenty of people. One approach that seems to be working so far for me is a small work around.

Here are the instructions:

1) Create a batch file with the following contents:

NET START “wuauserv”
NET START “browser”
NET START “cryptsvc”
NET START “dhcp”
NET START “trkwks”
NET START “ersvc”
NET START “helpsvc”
NET START “hidserv”
NET START “irmon”
NET START “seclogon”
NET START “wscsvc”
NET START “lanmanserver”
NET START “srservice”
NET START “schedule”
NET START “themes”
NET START “audiosrv”
NET START “W32Time”
NET START “wzcsvc”
NET START “lanmanworkstation”
NET START “fastuserswitchingcompatibility”

2) Run this batch file after every time you come out of a Sleep or Hibernate state.

I still get the windows error, but I just run this batch file and I can connect back up to my networks.

My conclusion is that Microsoft must be using SP3 as a migration incentive tool for the lagging XP customers such as myself. These rampantly critical defects remaining for months after the release are a signal to folks like me that XP’s days are indeed numbered.

With the general election coming quickly upon us in the United States, the American people have a lot to talk about and consider.

It is more important than ever that the American people get out to vote this year so that we can all work together to solve the pending questions looming in everyone’s minds.

I recently found a link off of Google Maps that will allow you to type in your address.  Voting information will come up with information on how to register and how many days you have before you can mail in your vote as an absentee voter.  Google is promising to also post your current polling location – however, this isn’t slated to be in the map until mid-October.

So, as you prepare to make your voice be heard, check out the Voting Information Page on Google Maps.