Category Archives: itadmins.org

As a contribution to the community, I am performing a crude usability test.  For years, bookstores have been selling thousands of self-help teach yourself office application books.  My curiosity focused on a book that my wife recently finished.  I have in front of me an Excel 2003 book and over the next few months, I [...] Continue reading →

Ahhh… the good old days. I had ones of these DataLink watches when I started flying on my first tech job. It saved a ton of time and helped me reschedule several flights, including one where I was north of the border without my luggage. Forget about cellphones, pdas, and wireless internet [...] Continue reading →

Just a heads up to Ubuntu and Debian users out there. There is a major bug in openSSL that needs to be patched on all Debian and Ubuntu systems and you must regenerate your ssh keys. I’ve included some links to the gory details:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-2 Continue reading →

To my dismay today, I ran into a problem with Firefox 3 Beta 5 on Hardy Heron.  Apparently, Mozilla has decided to put the screws to people who sign their own certificates or use certs not issued by their own domain by creating a four step process to bypass the error message.  Here is an [...] Continue reading →

This one was driving me nuts and I finally found a solution. For several weeks, Thunderbird has not been opening links I click on them. I found a solution here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=502651

Open Thunderbird version 2.0.0.14
Go to the Edit menu
Click on Preferences
Click the Advanced tab
Click the Config Editor button.
An about:config window will open up.
In the Filter [...] Continue reading →

I stumbled upon an amazing research tool toady while I was searching for a download management Firefox extension today.  Zotero is more than just a download tool.  It is a literary reasearch tool which allows you to track web citations, bookmarks, and the like from within the browser.  I would traditionally create a Bookmark folder [...] Continue reading →

I’ve added a GrandCentral button over on the right hand side to leave me a voicemail with any suggestions / complaints / praise you may have for the site. Also, please leave me a message if you are a sys admin interested in starting an IT podcast. It is completely up in [...] Continue reading →

For several years, a dark cloud has hung over the US open source community. Mostly triggered by the “SCO v. Everybody cases”, this cloud is the fear that some manner of patent could bring down open source projects, such as the kernel itself.
Two days ago, Red Hat, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the [...] Continue reading →

I am testing the Hardy Heron beta right now. I’ll spare a recap of the features that everyone else is talking about and delve into a UI change that I noticed right away. Instead of having a million boxes all over your screen when you are deleting, copying , and moving files, [...] Continue reading →

For those not aware, Canonical now has a voting system setup for submitting your own ideas on how to improve Ubuntu, called Ubuntu Brainstorm. This is similar to the Dell IdeaStorm site that established Ubuntu as a distribution that Dell Computer needed to include purchase options for. Anyway, I have submitted an idea [...] Continue reading →