Principles of Management – 1/29/2008

Tonight we talked about social responsibility and values, and what role they play, or should play (if any) in our businesses. I think we had some good discussions tonight, despite being interrupted for storms, etc. Please continue reading chapter five to make up for what we didn’t g et to cover tonight in class.

Homework:

• Chapter Five: pg 148-149 – Case Application, questions 1-6.

A+ Hardware/Software – 1/29/2008

Printers were the topic at hand today!  Printers, we discussed, are hardware and they are responsible for getting information from a computer onto a hard, paper copy.  We covered impact printers (dot-matrix) and non-impact printers (ink jet, laser and thermal).

We also re-covered IRQs.  Again, guys, please, please, please study these and know them by heart.  I’m not the type of guy who’s going to make you memorize something for the sheer thrill of it — I’m doing this because I know for a fact that it’s covered extensively on the A+ exam.

Homework:

• Chapter Seven: Review Questions
• Chapter Fifteen: Review Questions
• STUDY YOUR IRQs!!! 

Managing Windows Environment – 1/28/2008

Monday night’s class dealt with Group Policy.

Group Policy is a way that you can create a list of rights, or policies, and force them on different groups in your domain.  For example, you may wish to make sure your users all have Internet Explorer start from the company’s web page, or maybe you want to make sure that people in the Marketing department keep their My Documents folder on a specific file server and not on their local machines.  Or whatever.

The cool new toy that Windows 2003 gives us over Windows 2000 is the Group Policy Management Console.  What GPMC gives us over and above normal Server GP function is that Group Policy is now all under one roof.  No longer do I have to go from Users & Computers and then to Sites & Services and then to Local Policy.  It’s all right there!  It’s really nice since I can also pull up a specific set of Group Policy (a GPO, or Group Policy Object) and see which sites, domains or OUs that particular GPO is linked to.  Awesome.

Next week we’ll jump into Chapter Four, which covers managing users and groups.

Homework:

• Review Questions, Ch 3

Pro/Server – 1/28/2008

Today we caught ourselves up with a good study of Chapter 3, 4 and 5 — covering disks and file systems; device and peripheral management; and user experience management and configuration.

One area I didn’t cover a lot on in class that I feel does deserve some study time is the encryption capabilities of Windows XP. Encryption (EFS) keeps honest people honest — so if you don’t have a certificate (by way of proper logon credentials), you don’t get access to an encrypted file. As mentioned before, encrypting a file does nothing if you simply stay logged into your client machine. Anyone who then walks up to your logged-on machine can then access the file.

But what happens if you encrypt something and the leave the company?

If a certificate is deleted or otherwise inaccessible, a person designated as a Recovery Agent will be responsible for “unlocking” the file. Best practices dictates that the encrypted file be sent to the recovery agent to be decrypted — don’t expect the Recovery Agent to bring their own key to your computer, it probably won’t happen. What’s really important to point out here is: the recovery agent must be designated before EFS is used on a file! Otherwise, you’re up a creek.

Homework:

• Chapter Three: Review Questions; Scenario 3-2
• Chapter Four: Review Questions
• Chapter Five: Review Questions; Scenario 5-1

One Less Reason…

You now have one less reason to procrastinate: Microsoft, until June 30 of this year, has extended their “Second Shot” offer to exam takers. What does this mean? It means that if you attempt a Microsoft exam and don’t do well enough to pass, you can have a free “second shot” to take it again!! Take a look at Microsoft Learning’s website on the offer. Note too, that Microsoft is offering a free web learning module and e-book on Server 2008. Sweet. You OWE it to yourself to check that out.

This should be fantastic news for some of you who are wanting to take an exam, but are nervous about failing and having to pay to retake the exam. Take it once, figure out what you need to bone up on, and then retake it! Just make sure you sign up for the second shot deal before attempting the cert! (very important!)

Please note that this is only for Microsoft exams, and not for any CompTIA exam (A+, Network+, Server+).

A Blast From the Past

My current A+ class was discussing hardware cooling requirements, etc. yesterday and I was reminded of this tomshardware.com article detailing a computer built entirely without cooling fans.

How do you keep a computer cool without fans, you ask? Wesson oil, my friends. Wesson oil.

Enjoy!

Principles of Management – 1/22/2008

Culture.

It’s everywhere.  Every group (or organization) has some kind of culture — it could be a “good” culture where you feel like a family, where your workday *flies* by and you can’t wait to get up and to do your job because, man!  You belong there!  Other cultures aren’t so great, where you wonder if you’re going to be the next person in the 240% turnover rate that’s going to get fired for no apparent  reason, or maybe you’re desperately not wanting to go into work because you have to watch your unethical manager or coworkers line their pockets in less-than-savory ways.

As managers, we are largely responsible for the cultures that our employees work in.  We can help influence those cultures by applying the seven components of a culture (innovations, attention to detail, outcome orientation, people/team orientation, aggressiveness, stabillity) in ways that we see fit.  Some aspect of it will be out of our control however, and the various stories and rituals that precede us will dictate how much control we do or don’t have.

Great class tonight, and a great discussion!  Next week, we’ll cover Chapter Five and Six, dealing with Ethics and how a manager will make decisions.  See you next week!

Homework:

• Chapter Three: Case Application

A+ Hardware/Software – 1/22/2008

Today we finished up our hardware discussion involving motherboards, chipsets, RAM, processors, etc.  I also handed out a sheet with IRQs, I/O addresses, andDMA addresses.  I know I harped this to death in class, but I can’t reiterate enough: make sure you know this information!  Use flash cards, typing drills (good idea Scott!), hand copying, reciting — whatever it takes, get these IRQ assignments to be a natural part of your being!

Afterwards, we talked briefly about the laptop (notebook) computer.  Mostly, they work the same way as their desktop counterparts, but make sure you that you know aboutthe different kinds of displays they use (active vs. passive matrix),  and thedifferent types of PCMCIA cards and what they’re used for.

Homework:

• Chapter Three: Review Questions
• Chapter Thirteen: Review Questions

Principals of Management – 1/15/2008

Welcome to Principals of Management!  I hope you enjoyed the first night of class.  I did, and I’m looking forward to the next 10 weeks of study/discussion with you guys.

In our first class, we covered the first two chapters in the book, looking at what exactly management is and then different ways people have studied management over the last 100 or so years.

Homework:

• Chapter One & Two: Case Study at the end of each respective chapter.

CompTIA A+ Hardware/Software – 1/15/2008

Welcome to A+!  Today we had a whirlwind of an introduction to computers, and not just the wimpy “intro to computers” stuff, but actual real-life tear-your-computer-apart computer stuff.  There was a bit of introductory lecutre, but hopefully the tear down of computers and the Jimmy Fallon SNL skit was enough to make that bearable!

See you next week!

Homework:

• Read: Chapters 1-3, 12-13
• Questions: Chapter 1 & 2