John’s Technology Blog

I have read recently that if you buy a Johnson and Johnson rectal thermometer and take out the instructions from the box and read them carefully there is a notice that in small print says:

“Every Rectal Thermometer made by Johnson & Johnson is personally tested and then sanitized.”

When your own job get’s you down, think of this J&J claim and then put on your rose colored glasses and discover the silver lining to your own job – be grateful you don’t work at Johnson & Johnson’s rectal thermometer quality control department!

Google — one of the most cutting-edge companies in the technology world has been investing a lot of time and effort in Apple’s iPhone — yet another one of the most cutting-edge companies and products in the world today.

It appears that Google has been doing a lot of research and development with regard to voice transcription technology. I am a huge fan of voice translation — notably since I am writing this blog using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to facilitate my writing abilities. I am always amazed at the progress of voice translation has experienced over the past five years.

Google has introduced quite a number of voice translation applications with regard to their popular online web search. One of their well-known services Google 411 allows you to call Google and ask for typical 411 directory information such as movie locations and showtimes.

It appears that Google has gone the extra mile with the iPhone. They’ve created an application for the iPhone wherein you just say what you want in the iPhone browser returns the Google results just as if you type them in the search bar. It’s quite impressive technology, and though I do not own an iPhone (that is another blog in and of itself) I would really be interested to see how useful this new app can be.

Check out for yourself in the following video by Google:

Or visit the this link.

Ok…so no, this is not about putting your new 52 inch LCD tv into a steel reinforced concrete vault with 10 inch walls buried 30 feet under the ground to keep it from melting down in a nuclear Armageddon.

We had a problem with one of our LCD tvs at work. This TV acts as a dashboard monitor in the hallway. It displays all of our program statistics to help us know if we are on track or not. It is set up to display firefox in full screen mode.

Lately we have been noticing some “Burn In” on the monitor. In order to save it from utter screen etching doom, I used the scheduler in Windows XP to do the following.

6:30PM – Kill the firefox dashboard
7:00PM – Start the screen saver
5:00AM – Start up the firefox dashboard – killing the screensaver

There were a few tricks I had to do in order for this to all work properly.

1) KILL FIREFOX
Create a job in the scheduler program. In the run field, type

taskkill /im firefox.exe

Set the scheduled event to “Run only if logged in”
Set the schedule for this event to be just before you start the screen saver.

2) START THE SCREEN SAVER
First of all, in order to start a screen saver from a command line, you need to use the “-s” option when calling the .scr file. For Example:

c:\windows\system32\sstext3d.scr -s

However, you cannot just use this string in the RUN field of a new scheduled job. You must create a batch file (in my case go.bat) to do this for you. I created a go.bat in my c:\windows\system32 directory. That go.bat contained the screensaver call outlined above.

Set your schedule for the screensaver sometime after you kill firefox. Don’t forget to set this task to run only if you are currently logged in.

3) START FIREFOX
In order for this task to work properly and to kill the screensaver, you need to ensure that this task is set to run if you are currently logged in. Also, you need enable the checkbox: Wake the computer to run this task. This will stop the screen saver.

I just had our dashboard set as the default bookmark for firefox. Thus, when this scheduled task launches firefox, it goes right into the dashboard.

For those interested, you can play with the files I created by downloading this zip file:
burn_in_protection

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.

Several years ago when I worked as a manager in a retail establishment, I learned a true lesson from a friend and mentor. We were hiring employees that would be facing the customers. All of our interview questions centered around their knowledge of the retail industry.

After one particular interview, my friend and I discussed the importance of personality and passion for what one does over the knowledge that is required for the job. In many instances we concluded that you can always teach an employee how to do the job — as long as they come with a certain set of core skills.

In my opinion, it is much harder to teach an employee to have passion for what they do. That passion and personality comes from years of development and from their character. We decided that we would hire more on the passion over the knowledge. Over the years that has been a key ingredient to successful hiring situations in my career.

When I saw this video I felt reaffirmed in my decision 10 years ago to place such a high emphasis on hiring the right kind of person over the person that knows the right stuff.

I love looking at people that can throw away their traditional preconceptions and processes for doing even the most ordinary and standard of tasks and take a new look.  These new perspectives often don’t yield life-altering changes in time and space, but they do evolve ideas into catalysts that do change how we act and interact with others.

One such interesting idea came across my desk today – it is DoodleBuzz – a new way to look at the news.  Rather than read the headlines straight through from top to bottom, DoodleBuzz lets you be artistic in how you arrange the news.

Check it out at:  http://www.doodlebuzz.com/