Troubleshooting Applications – 3/11/2009

Today we finished the book by covering Chapters 9, 10, and 11.  Some topics that we hit upon were sharing and file permissions (remember, most restrictive trumps unless you’re comparing two NTFS permissions, and then the most lenient apply). 

Next week, we’ll have Ted Sitz from Perot Systems come in and give a presentation on what he does in dealing with end users.  Ted’s a cool guy, and it should be very, very interesting.

Homework:

• Chapter 9: Review Questions
• Chapter 10: Review Questions
• Chapter 11: Review Questions

Information Processing/Word Core – 3/10/2009

Today we had a fun class (I feel, anyway) and added a bunch of graphics to our documents.  We worked with clip art, photos, text boxes and more. 

Homework:

• Chapter 7 Matching
• Chapter 7 Fill-in the Blank
• Project 3C (pg 459)
• Project 3G (pg 469)

A+ Hardware/Software – 3/9/2009

Today we covered chapter 14 and 15 — we’re almost finished!  Both chapters were largely review, but we did spend quite a bit of time discecting the command prompt.  Perhaps one of the coolest (geekist?  dorkiest?) activities we did was observe the network degredation of a random PC by issuing a classic, simply “Ping of Death” attack on it.  We observed how, even with our small class, the network performance of a computer can be affected by sending a large number of large ping packets.

Homework:

• Chapter14:Review Questions
• Chapter 15: Review Questions

Pro/Server – 3/4/2009

Ok, so we had a LOT of ground to cover, and cover it we did.

First of all, we took a midterm exam that we should have taken last week.  All in all the class average was decent, although I would have liked to have seen better scores.  After that, we had an introduction to our lab environment, where we will use our Windows XP machines from the first half of the quarter to remote into our new Server 2003 machines to do the lab exercises.  I feel like that went remarkably well, and hopefully you guys have a good understanding of what you’re doing when you “remote” into a server.

After that was all said and done, we dove right into content.  Since last week was the week we were to cover Chapters 1 – 3, we sprinted through them, hitting the highlights such as the four Windows Server 2003 versions (Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter) and the differences between them.

When we got “caught up”, we began our study of Chapter 4 and 5.  Chapter 4 was all about backup, which you guys have had in a number of classes by now, so hopefully it’s very clear to you what the differences are between them.  Chapter 5 was actually new content, where we briefly studied Windows Software Update Service and the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.  Good times.

Since we covered so much in one day, I’m going a little light on you with the homework.  We’ll be doing questions from each chapter, but only the odd numbered ones.

Homework:

• Chapter 1: Review Questions (odd)
• Chapter 2: Review Questions (odd)
• Chapter 3: Review Questions (0dd)
• Chapter 4: Review Questions (0dd)
• Chapter 5: Review Questions (odd)

Troubleshooting Apps – 3/3/2009

When we arrived in class, we had a whopping four (count ‘em, four) computers that were brought in for repair.  Since we’re sailing right along with our class, I figured we could take some time out and get some real world experience fixing the computers.

Unfortunately, two of the computers were notebooks with dead batteries and missing power cords.  There was no powering them up, even if we wanted to.  Sigh.

So, instead we focused hard on the remaining two.  One in particular was a bear, thanks to a near-dead optical drive.  (I ended up finishing it about an hour after class was dismissed.)

Homework:

• No homework this time, next week we’ll get chapters 9 and 10.

Information Processing/Word Core – 3/3/2009

Today our class covered Chapter 6, the second chapter of Word Core.  We learned about a number of features that Word has to offer, including improved page layout tools and citation tools.

Homework:

• Chapter 6 Matching
• Project 2E

A+ Hardware/Software – 3/2/2009

Today we covered chapters 12 and 13.

Homework:

• Chapter 12 Review Questions
• Chapter 13 Review Questions

Pro/Server – 2/25/2009

Today attendance was S-P-A-R-S-E.

So, Brently and I basically hung out, and got our labs installed and ready to go.  We’ll have to kick butt the rest of the quarter to get caught up, so be ready to hit it hard.

Homework:

• No homework!  Next week, we’ll cover double.